


hawkeye, why hawkeye?

by Granspn



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Also dancing, Officially, Slow Burn, and progresses through various episodes through till after the show, and therapy from sidney, but for all intents and purposes really can't, eventually, just your basic meandering story about two people who think they can communicate, starts from s04e06 the bus, there will be some schemes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27569980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: today’s theme is the mortifying ordeal of being known. So, a series of scenes during and after the show where bj and hawkeye try to read each other’s minds instead of just. talking to each other like humans basically, with a happy ending bc I’m sappy like that.“Maybe if Hawkeye has to take someone down with him, BJ hopes it’s him he takes.”
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt (referenced)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 109





	1. past

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a combination of me wanting to write about how people around camp talk about hawkeye when he's not there, bj and hawkeye using stories/jokes/fantasies as deflection to avoid talking about their real lives and thus being weirdly unknowable, and also margbeej parallels and those are coming later I promise… for now, let’s take it from the top.

BJ thinks he has Hawkeye all figured out. He’s a good person, so he hates it there. Simple. Sure, he’s angrier than most, and bitterer than most, and cleverer and funnier and louder and more sarcastic than most, but that’s allowed. BJ’s surprised more people aren’t like that. Then again, if everybody was like that, there wouldn’t be a war going on right now.

Now, for a guy that’s so heart-on-his-sleeve, cards-on-the-table, Hawkeye can be uncharacteristically cagey when it comes to certain subjects. _Someone’s gonna have to get me pregnant first._ Hawkeye’s strange response to being asked if he was married echoes through BJ’s mind at the most inopportune times. Like at the 38th Parallel Medical Society when he’s watching Hawkeye flirt with a nurse and wondering just how much of his heart is in it. Maybe she’s wondering that, too, because BJ sees her turn him down and goes to fill the empty space beside Hawkeye before someone else can.

“Strike out?” he asks.

“I’ll never get to third base this way.”

“Kill the ump,” BJ says evenly, then signals to the bartender to bring them two more of whatever Hawkeye’s drinking.

“Appreciate the commiseration.”

“Co-misery loves company.”

Then Hawkeye looks at him. BJ knows he’s unreadable. Well, really, he knows his exterior is so goddamn genial that people don’t feel the urge to try and read him. All except Hawkeye, who looks at him every day like the only person on the planet who actually thinks he might have hidden depths. Hawkeye seems to like what he sees, and he smiles. Not the uncontrollable wide smile for when he’s about to burst out laughing, or the self-satisfied crinkle-eyed smile for when some military type calls him a troublemaker, but the lopsided toothy smile he gives to all the nurses. He’s making a face like he’s flirting.

“Right,” he says, and knocks back the rest of his drink. BJ can’t believe he didn’t see it before. Hawkeye’s been flirting with him since almost the minute they met. And he thinks he may have been flirting back. His pulse quickens. He’s not drunk enough to know what to do next. 

(On his second day (eternity) ever at the 4077th, BJ goes to Major Houlihan’s tent just after breakfast. He’d eaten with Hawkeye. They’d sat next to each other, not across.

“Who is it?” she calls after he knocks.

“Captain Hunnicutt.” And he can practically hear her rolling her eyes.

He apologizes for the way he arrived. He explains all the horrible things they saw on the way back to camp. 

“Welcome to Korea,” Houlihan says, gesturing vaguely to their surroundings.

“Major, I’ve never seen anything, anything even remotely like that before. My legs were jelly even before Captain Pierce took me to Rosie’s. I know he went against orders to come and get me, but if he hadn’t been there I probably wouldn’t be here now, in one piece.”

Some iciness melts from the major’s gaze.

“That’s Pierce for you,” she says. “Insubordinate as all get out, but then you don’t quite know what you’d do without him.” _You, too, huh?_

“Can I ask you something, Major?”

“I think you just did,” she says, and her tone is softer now.

“What do you think of Hawkeye, really?”

“Oh, Captain,” she says with a small derisive laugh, “Pierce is a lech, a pervert, and a menace. You name it, he’s violated it. He’s thoroughly unmilitary and some days I resent the fact he was ever sent here.” BJ raises his eyebrows, still wearing the bemused expression he hasn’t been able to shake since he landed. “But he’s a top notch surgeon. One of the best I’ve ever seen. He’s very talented, and he cares a lot about what happens to those boys on his table. A lot. Sometimes more than… I don’t know,” she finishes quietly.

“Uh-huh,” BJ says slowly. “Thank you, Major–”

“And another thing. It was pretty damn obnoxious dealing with him and McIntyre, but even so, I’m not happy to see him go without his best friend.” It stings BJ to hear her say that and he’s not sure why.

“It’s rough.”

“I suppose so. That’s the way it is in the army, you know, but he’s not army, as he so graciously likes to remind me as often as possible.”

At this point BJ really can’t work out whether she loves him or hates him. Maybe it’s both.

“Right, well–”

“I’ll tell you this much, he’s temperamental at the best of times, but right now he’s a real live wire. Maybe don’t get attached, Hunnicutt. For both your sakes.”

“I’m sure it’s not as serious as that.”

“Captain?” Margaret looks straight at him. “Pierce is magnetic, okay? He’s gonna pull you into his little orbit and I’m sure you’ll be riding high, thick as thieves, the two of you, because as sure as General MacArthur smokes a corncob pipe, Hawkeye Pierce needs a copilot. But one day? One day, Captain, that martyr complex of his is going to get the better of him and he is going to self-destruct. And who knows who he’ll take down with him?”

“Who knows?” BJ says amiably. It’s the only way he ever says anything.)

Maybe if Hawkeye has to take someone down with him, BJ hopes it’s him he takes.

“So, what’s there even to do at a conference like this?” BJ begins his line of questioning.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you’re not flirting with the nurses.” BJ shimmies the fingers on his left hand, his wedding ring just barely glinting in the dim light.

“Flirt with the doctors,” Hawkeye answers easily. But that was a gimme. Hawkeye swivels on his bar stool and rests his elbows behind him so he’s watching the room.

“Are you always such a tease?” BJ says as he moves to mirror his position, taking care to speak mid-turn when his face is closest to Hawkeye’s neck. Hawkeye answers without looking at him.

“Only if there’s an ‘R’ in the month.”

It’s May. But BJ’s sure that’s irrelevant. He’s doing it properly now, the flirting, but only to make sure Hawkeye doesn’t notice that he suddenly noticed.

“The exhibition is still up in the lobby, you know. I wanted to look at that presentation on spinal cord injuries,” BJ says, the volume of his voice rising as the din of the crowd grows. It’s after dinner and most people are calling it a day.

“Tomorrow, mon capitan!” Hawkeye says with a wave of his hand. Then he finally looks back over to him. “Tomorrow.” 

“Okay, tomorrow,” BJ concedes. “Wanna take a walk outside, do some sightseeing?” Hawkeye grins and rolls his eyes.

“Try again.”

“Fine. Wanna go up to the room and get drunk?”

“Now you’re talking.”

Without looking, they both reach behind them to underneath the bar and grab the first bottle they feel. Hawkeye manages to snatch a nice whiskey and BJ a full bottle of ouzo. Hawkeye taps his foot impatiently while they ride the elevator upstairs. 

BJ and Hawkeye are on the same wavelength. Always, it appears. BJ has friends, good friends, best friends, with whom it took years to achieve what he and Hawkeye have managed in a few short weeks. BJ has two people keeping him sane right now, one twelve thousand miles away and one three paces in front of him, and he’s not sure when he went from thinking of Hawkeye in the same breath as Leo Bardonero to thinking of him in the same breath as Peg.

 _Someone’s gonna have to get me pregnant first_. BJ has to stop himself physically shaking his head to try and get rid of that thought. If Hawkeye were a woman, someone definitely would have married him by now. He’s simply too good to resist. BJ can’t envision him not smothered by proposals. But this Hawkeye in this universe doesn’t seem to want to settle down. He just seems to want to flirt with nurses who reject him and doctors he doesn’t have a chance with and leave it at that. BJ is left to wonder if that’s really making him happy.

(After he talks to Margaret, he gets called into Frank’s office, and he stops to talk to Radar on the way in. He can already tell he won’t mind to keep Frank waiting.

“Captain Pierce, sir? Oh, he’s really a swell guy,” Radar tells him. “I know yesterday he probably seemed a little crazy, but he’s not always like that, he’s just… deep down he’s a good person. Real torn up about being here. Hates to see people in any kind of hurt. Makes it a little funny that he’s a doctor and everything.”

“Seems like he probably couldn’t help himself,” BJ says, ever the rational mind. 

Radar looks up at him and considers that. “Probably not. He might work harder ’n anybody else on this camp. All except for Major Houlihan, probably.”

“And you.”

“Maybe. But he doesn’t just work hard at all the medical stuff. He works real hard to keep this camp running just about as much as I do. He makes everybody laugh, you know, and reminds them that this is a crazy place. It’s sorta like he’s absorbing all the bad stuff for everybody, like him being crazy is what’s keeping the rest of us here sane.” Major Houlihan had called it a martyr complex. 

“That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”

“I don’t think he minds. I think he likes it, being the one everybody can count on.” BJ’s not so sure about that.)

 _Someone’s gonna have to get me pregnant first_. BJ takes a shot every time the memory crosses his mind. Hawkeye does the same, though he doesn’t know what they’re drinking to, and soon enough they’re drunk enough for their conversation not to have consequences. He knows Hawkeye probably doesn’t care about stuff like that, so BJ figures he’ll watch out for the both of them.

So: BJ’s lying sprawled out on one of the beds, the now empty whiskey bottle lying limply across one palm. Hawkeye’s on his stomach on the other one, his head resting on his crossed forearms.

“Have you ever been in love, Hawkeye?” BJ asks dreamily to the ceiling.

“Have I what?”

“Been in love?” BJ repeats.

“Sure,” Hawkeye says, “at least once a day since I was sixteen and twice on Sundays.”

BJ laughs despite himself. “C’mon, just answer the question.”

“Which was?”

“Have you ever…?”

“Ever what?”

“Been in love!”

“I don’t know!” Hawkeye says. BJ is momentarily surprised he got an answer at all. He props himself up on his arms and sees Hawkeye looking at him, brow furrowed and frowning. “Why do you ask?”

“You don’t know?”

“Don’t know why? Or don’t know if I’ve been in love?”

“I’m asking ‘cause I wanna know.”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“Jesus, you’re like a kid when they learn the word ‘why.’”

“Yes, I think so,” Hawkeye actually answers, maybe just to get one up on BJ.

“You think so?” BJ says pleasantly. “You don’t know?”

“How can you be sure, if it didn’t last forever?” Hawkeye rolls over onto his back like a cat finding the right spot in the sun.

“It’s only love if it lasts forever?” BJ says, pushing himself forward onto his stomach and resting his chin in his left hand.

“It might’ve been love. But that’s the way to know.”

“So you can never know for sure.”

“Why not?”

“Because forever doesn’t exist? You won’t know when you’ve found forever until you’re dead, and then you won’t know anything.” BJ is starting to find this conversation depressing. He’d meant for it to be fun. He’ll give Hawkeye this, he can subvert your damn expectations all right.

“I guess so,” Hawkeye sighs.

“That’s some way to live, Hawk. You’ve gotta let more love in.”

“Don’t you worry, I let plenty of love in, just ask the nurses. And some of the corpsmen,” Hawkeye adds for good measure, just so BJ won’t be able to accuse him of being serious.

Margaret was right. Hawkeye is a goddamn magnet. BJ would just love to know what happened to him to make him think he isn’t loved.

A few weeks later and Hawkeye’s past has caught up with him. The way that Hawkeye looks at Carlye is familiar to BJ, but he can’t figure out why, like he’s seen him make that face before, but can’t remember what he was looking at. When Hawkeye looks at her, talks about her, implies that he’s thinking about her, it stings BJ in a new way that he doesn’t understand. He figures it’s because he knows it’s going to end badly, and Hawkeye is too much of an idealist to see it. He doesn’t know how to protect him from the pain that’s coming. It stings in a new way when Hawkeye spends almost every night with her and walks with a spring in his step that BJ almost doesn’t recognize.

So BJ calls Peg. Because when being away from home drives him crazy, he has Hawkeye, and when Hawkeye drives him crazy, he has Peg. Obviously, Hawkeye comes into Radar’s office while he’s placing the call, sickeningly giddy with youthful romance. (BJ’s one to talk, of course. He knows the way he looks when he talks about Peg. But what right does Hawkeye have looking like that over a woman who’s probably going to break his heart tomorrow?)

(On his second day (eternity) ever at the 4077th, Klinger tells BJ that Hawkeye is all right. Sometimes he thinks he deserves the Section 8 Klinger himself is bucking for, but other than that he’s a stand-up guy with a great eye for fabrics. A handful of nurses say he flirts relentlessly but is basically harmless, and some even admit that his charm and sense of humor aren’t just bluster, if he knows what they mean. Father Mulcahy lets him know that with Hawkeye’s sensitivity and compassion he thinks he’d make a good priest, which is about the last thing BJ expected to hear. The chaplain is also the last of maybe half a dozen people who add how bad they feel that Trapper left without saying goodbye, a development in Hawkeye’s personal life that just about everyone seems to know about. Small camp. He wonders how anyone keeps anything hidden. Hawkeye certainly doesn’t.)

“Or ‘married person,’” BJ says, filing for Hawkeye while he waits for his ham operator. The only way to get him to talk about anything is very much to take the long way round.

“I haven’t been home much the past few weeks,” Hawkeye says.

“Better, that way you’ve missed me sobbing into my pillow.” Or words to that effect.

“I think we’re very happy.” _You think?_

“I think you’d probably know.”

“You disapprove.”

“Me? You want disapproval, you disapprove. I’m not the Acme Judgment Company.”

“A lot of married people are unfaithful.”

“I read that, in the _Cheaters’ Almanac_.” _Steady._

“You?”

“Me what?” He’s invited it on himself at this point. Maybe he wanted Hawkeye to ask him.

“Ever been, unfaithful?” Hawkeye presses. BJ deflects again. Maybe they are too alike for their own good.

“To whom?”

“Well, who could you be unfaithful to?”

“Myself, for openers.”

“No, come on, you know what I mean. To your wife.” Hawkeye’s getting fed up, the hypocrite.

“You mean have I ever strayed?”

“Ever checked in somewhere without a toothbrush.”

“Never.” _True_.

“Never been tempted?”

“Tempted’s another subject.”

“Ah, you have been tempted.” _Not until this exact minute, no._

“Never, but it’s another subject,” BJ lies, his expression not wavering for a second.

“Rat,” Hawkeye says, returning his grin, and BJ has no idea what he wanted to hear instead. Then the phone rings. There’s no distinction between how he feels talking to Hawkeye and talking to Peg anymore, no drop in the pit of his stomach or fluttering heartbeat to indicate when one conversation ends and the other begins.

“Look, minding my own business is a full time job,” BJ goes on. “In my spare time it’s my hobby. I can’t divide myself emotionally. I couldn’t break my word to Peg. And not because God will send me to Hell without an electric fan, or because it’s not the right thing to do. I simply don’t want to.” Which manages to be true, too.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about messing up your life.”

Hawkeye usually stays away from married. Except in extenuating circumstances. No time to dwell on that now.

“I’m sure.” Then Peg is on the other line. Happiness, but not euphoria. Home, but not. Still, at least Radar comes in so BJ doesn’t have to actually look at Hawkeye while he’s talking to his wife. Not being able to divide himself emotionally certainly has its downsides.

After Carlye leaves, it stings in a new way when BJ finally recognizes the way Hawkeye looked at her. It’s how Hawkeye looks at him when he makes snarky comments during meetings in the colonel’s office and when he’s in the O.R. telling Frank how incompetent he is and when he’s reading medical journals by the dim light of his lamp and Hawkeye thinks he can’t see him, but he can. Which means Hawkeye’s looking at him like he’s broken his heart. But wouldn’t that mean he had to love him first? BJ figured out about the flirting but this might be something else.

“What did you mean, she never altogether leaves?” BJ asks on one of those nights when he’s reading on his bed and he knows Hawkeye will know what he means because he’s knitting the same peach colored scarf as when she arrived. 

“You know how it is with exes,” he says without looking up. “You can’t shake ‘em. You still dream about them years after they leave like your subconscious doesn’t know time has passed. Don’t you get that sometimes?”

“Peg’s the only woman I’ve ever been with,” BJ says. It’s _no,_ in the most roundabout way. 

Hawkeye’s fingers twitch almost imperceptibly, like he’s about to put his knitting down, but he keeps it casual.

“No kidding.”

“I did used to trade rooks with Angie from the chess club, but that was all perfectly innocent.”

Hawkeye gets a slightly cheeky look on his face. “So you never, uh… until Peg?”

“Nope,” BJ answers. They didn’t wait until they got married, but it’s not a lie.

Hawkeye undoes a bad loop while he talks, his voice still laced with innuendo. “Then how’d you know it was any good?”

“Oh, it was good,” BJ answers in the exact same tone. It wasn’t, really, when they first started, but it’s good now, so he figures that’s close enough.

“I genuinely don’t believe you, but I can never tell when you’re lying.”

“Oh, so if I asked, you would just tell me if losing your virginity _went well_?”

“Sure I would!”

“You wouldn’t.”

“It didn’t for the record,” Hawkeye says, discarding his needles. “We tried for half an hour, got absolutely nowhere, and ended up having to get ourselves off on opposite sides of my bed.” Dangerously close to a situation they could replicate at their leisure.

“I don’t know if I believe you! I can never tell when you’re lying! You just make up stories, I don’t know if they’re true.”

Hawkeye looks confused, maybe even offended. “That– I don’t lie to you, Beej.” Maybe Hawkeye even believes that, like he trusts BJ enough to know when he’s joking. 

“I don’t lie to you,” BJ lies, though he’s not sure if it’s to Hawkeye or himself. “Can we back this conversation up a little? I think I preferred it when you were interrogating me about my sex life.”

“Fine,” Hawkeye says. Give him an out to avoid a difficult conversation and he’ll take it faster than you can say ‘humor as a coping mechanism.’ Hawkeye swallows. “How did you know Peg was the one?”

BJ leans back. “She was the only one in her whole sorority who could spell ‘Hunnicutt.’ Two ’N’s’ and two ’T’s.’”

“And ‘bullshit’ with two ‘L’s.’”

BJ sighs and meets Hawkeye’s gaze. “I don’t know what to tell you, Hawk, we just click.”

“Right,” Hawkeye says. BJ isn’t any closer to finding out if Hawkeye is in love with him. He thinks maybe he’d try harder if he weren’t afraid of the answer. He’s spared, and what a horrible way to feel about it, from that line of thinking any longer by an announcement of choppers. He feels Hawkeye’s hand on the small of his back as they leave, their shoulders brushing as they stomp across the compound. Hawkeye feels something, that’s for sure. Then again, Hawkeye feels everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next, s5-11 basically. the dialogue from s4e23 "the more i see you" is from s4e23 "the more i see you." yknow. oh also the title is something bj says to him in welcome to korea while radar is literally having a panic attack between them at the bar. insane energy guys.


	2. present, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> seasons 5-7 basically

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is getting long since i've been like uncontrollably writing for the past three days at least, so i've had to split it into more chapters. we'll see what happens!

On his second day (eternity) ever at the 4077th, Frank calls BJ into his office to reprimand him for not reporting to him when he arrived.

“Captain Hunnicutt. I requested your presence in my office _ten minutes_ ago, and here you are, jabbering away to the company clerk. I’m warning you, Pierce is already starting to rub off on you and you’re going to regret it if you let it go much further.”

“I think _you_ might regret it,” BJ says evenly, still smiling. Frank looks confused. He opens the office door and doesn’t hold it for BJ when the two of them go in.

“I’ll level with you, BJ– can I call you BJ?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

Frank looks confused again. It’s a sight BJ expects he’ll get used to.

“Pierce is a cut up,” Frank says. “I don’t find him funny myself, but it’s made him very popular over here. But these people don’t understand what a danger he is to the whole operation.”

“The whole…”

“To the war effort, Hunnicutt, the war!”

“Isn’t this whole place a danger to the war effort? Stitching people up instead of taking them apart?”

“Stitching up American soldiers, pal, so they can go out and rid the world of the communist menace.”

If BJ recalls correctly, the uniforms come off at the door, but he elects not to correct the major at the moment.

“So what is it exactly that makes Pierce such a threat?”

“He’s a malcontent! He’s unpatriotic, obsessed with peace,” Frank spits. 

“You’re right, that does sound dangerous.”

“Now just you watch it, Dr. Weisenheimer. Major Houlihan and I have had it up to here with Pierce’s attitude and we don’t need you adding yours into mix.” Frank holds his hand up above his head to indicate just how much of Hawkeye’s attitude he’s dealing with.

“I don’t know if Major Houlihan’s as upset about it as you are. It sounded to me like she has a lot of respect for the man.”

BJ likes to think he straddles a line between diplomat and shit-stirrer. Taken out of context, nothing he says could ever be described as the least bit contentious. But delivering things in just the right way to the right person he imagines he could be as effective as Hawkeye when it comes to making trouble.

Months later (and has it only been months? It feels like lifetimes have passed) when BJ awakes to Hawkeye’s bloodcurdling screams in the middle of the night, the panic in the pit of his stomach is really something else. Conventional wisdom dictates that doctors make the worst patients. Like most conventions, Hawkeye defies this, and welcomes it when Sidney is mysteriously summoned to the 4077th to help with a secret patient that everyone and their brother knows is him. Before the poker game, the pretense of which Hawkeye is nevertheless proud enough to accept, BJ takes a walk with Sidney around the edges of camp, close to the border of the minefield.

“I’m worried about him, Sidney.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” BJ looks up to see Sidney fondly smiling at him, which feels oddly inappropriate. “I’m sorry, go on,” Sidney says.

“I’m worried about him all the time.” BJ had remained calm when reassuring Hawkeye everything would be all right, but that was just for his benefit. “You know, he really thinks he’s losing it this time. It’s admirable sometimes, the way he’s willing to be the only person so devoted to ending the war that he’ll send it to Maine just to get it away from here, but sometimes? Sidney, sometimes he drives me so crazy I think I’m gonna strangle him. Because some of this stuff… he’s doing it to himself and he doesn’t even know it. He doesn’t listen to reason, he doesn’t think there’s any way to do things but his way… he’s gonna get himself killed if he doesn’t take it easy sometimes, and I can’t get him to listen to me, and I don’t know! I mean, what is that?”

“Sounds like you love him.”

Sidney’s the only one besides BJ who can drop bombs like that and sound like he said nothing more consequential than his coffee order.

“What?” BJ says, startled into laughter, trying to keep his tone from verging into the hysterical. 

“I think everybody here loves him, and they show it in different ways,” Sidney continues casually. “Calling me here to help him is a big one. But it seems like he doesn’t always pick up on it when people are showing him they care. Maybe that makes you angry, because you probably care the most out of anyone. That’s love, BJ. It’s a good thing.”

“Love? I don’t– I’m not–”

“There are a lot of different kinds of love, Doctor, each just as important as the next.”

The sun is setting and the wind is starting to pick up. Sometimes, when the breeze rolls in the right way, you can actually smell the cool mountain air, so BJ closes his eyes and imagines for a moment he’s up Mount Rainier on a humid day, or halfway to Desolation Peak where the wooden sign driven into the rocks tells you to go back or else prepare for the air to thin. The air feels thin enough here for the fantasy to work.

“You ever go rock climbing, Sidney?”

“Only over the boulders in Central Park. You don’t think you love him?”’

“Hey, I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to admit here, but–”

“I’m not trying to get you to _admit_ anything.” And BJ does know he’s silly for thinking Sidney was. “I think Hawkeye is a very lovable person.”

BJ stares at him, his expression no less neutral than if he had just given him directions to the library.

“He’s scared,” BJ finally says. “I want to help him feel better. Is that so crazy?”

“Who said anything about crazy?”

“You said I love him!”

“And that would make you crazy?”

“Sidney, I only just met him. Love is… something reserved for certain people. Your wife, your, your family, I don’t know.”

“Your friends?” Sidney prompts.

“Yes, your friends, of course your friends. But Hawkeye’s not my _friend,_ he’s– We’re stuck here together. When we go home… I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see him anymore, since I don’t know if I’m even going to acknowledge that this part of my life ever happened.”

“You can’t be friends with people if it’s only temporary?” Sidney says. BJ absolutely hates how similar that is to what he asked Hawkeye about love.

“So he’s my friend. So why does he make me so angry sometimes?”

“I think you don’t get that kind of anger without love. Strong feelings go together.”

“I don’t have strong feelings. He does.” After he says it, BJ realizes that might have been an insane thing to say. He smiles so maybe Sidney will think he was joking. Sidney doesn’t smile.

“He certainly does.”

“Listen. Let’s say I do have love for him. How could it happen so fast? You don’t just meet people and then love them.” Maybe Hawkeye does. But Hawkeye isn’t people.

“I don’t know what to tell you, BJ. Some people just click.” _Literally fuck you, Sidney_.

“We should start up the game. You’re only here ‘cause we’re– we’re worried about Hawkeye.”

Sidney raises his eyebrows and shakes his head every so slightly. “You always want to talk about Hawkeye, but one day we’ll talk about you. Even if I have to pry those feelings out of you with a crowbar,” he adds with a twinkle in his eye. That’s why what happens the next week is definitely Sidney’s fault.

The next week BJ has his first dream about Hawkeye. Well, not his first ever dream about him; he’s been a recurring character for the better part of the past six months seeing as it apparently took him all of three weeks to burrow himself somewhere in BJ’s subconscious. But no, the week after Hawkeye’s nightmares is when BJ has his first dream _about Hawkeye_.

On second thought, maybe it wasn’t even about him. Maybe he was just dreaming of Peg gaining a foot in height and dyeing her hair black. Because that would be perfectly rational. It hadn’t even been very specific, no reason it had to be Hawkeye in particular. It was just warm kisses and soft touches among a cloud of white linens. If he closes his eyes he definitely can’t picture the wallpaper, eerily reminiscent of the pattern they have at the Daiichi Hotel in Tokyo.

The problem, if it is a problem, is that it definitely was Hawkeye. Because BJ wakes up all but moaning his name, and looking beside him expecting to see Hawkeye’s face next to his. Usually if BJ has a problem he simply tells himself he doesn’t, and it goes away in time. This one doesn’t go away. In fact, it only compounds, and the dreams become more elaborate, almost romantic, even. The energy within them could hardly be called erotic; it’s more like tenderness: they hold hands, sit in each other’s laps, try to make out next to the minefield and get perpetually interrupted. One night BJ dreams specifically that Hawkeye is licking split pea soup off his fingers and it would have been funny enough to report at breakfast if he couldn’t still picture dream-Hawkeye’s face while he was doing it. 

His second port-of-call, of course, would be to confide in Hawkeye, which is naturally off the table. He doesn’t think Margaret would take kindly to this complaint, either, and discounts Colonel Potter and Father Mulcahy for various and obvious reasons as well. And he doesn’t want to talk to Sidney because he absolutely blames him for planting the stupid idea of loving stupid Hawkeye into BJ’s stupid brain the first place. 

No. The real problem, if it is a problem, is that BJ likes it. He even starts to look forward to it. And he’s a doctor, with psychiatrist friends. He knows he can’t truly be held accountable for what his unconscious mind gets up to when he’s not looking. So he just about lets himself enjoy it. The cruel irony of the whole thing is that while he gets seven minutes in heaven every night, the subject of his fantasies of happenstance is six feet away from him not sleeping because he’s afraid of what he might see if he does.

If BJ were being a good friend, he would offer to hold Hawkeye as he went to bed. He would stroke his hair, and let him lie against his chest and hear his steady heartbeat. BJ doesn’t even want to think about what he’d dream that night, if he ever fell asleep with Hawkeye in his arms like that. It might go beyond what he’s able to rationalize away, and that’s saying something.

The solution, BJ decides, is to get Hawkeye out of his mind, to scrub him from his subconscious. All that entails is not seeing him for a couple of days, and BJ’s brain will be ready to recast the subjects of his nightly films. The first thing BJ realizes after deciding that is just how difficult it is to avoid someone you’ve been attached at the hip to for the last half a year. It’s not that Hawkeye is clingy, though perhaps he is; it’s that it’s way weirder for them to ever be apart than for them to be constantly together. Even Margaret notices, then Father Mulcahy and Radar, and of course Hawkeye himself, who at least gives him a cursory twenty-four hour grace period before bringing it up.

“Everything copasetic, BJ? I can’t help but notice you’ve been treating this place like a leper colony of one.”

“What?” BJ says, making a show of holding his place in his book to look up at Hawkeye.

“You’re ignoring me. Except we’ve never had an argument as long as I’ve known you, so I was just wondering if you’d deign to tell me what’s going on.”

“‘As long as I’ve known you,’” BJ repeats to him, “What do you even mean? It’s normal to know someone for six months and never fight.”

“Maybe in real life,” Hawkeye says. “Not when you’re together every second of every day surrounded by the biggest tragedy any of us have seen in our lifetimes. It would be more normal if you weren’t fine more often.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because I’m fine, I’m just… I’m just trying to focus. Okay? If you want me I’ll be reading. Focusing. Silently.”

Hawkeye nods leerily. Maybe five minutes pass before he talks again. The man is incapable of simply sitting in silence.

“BJ?” He ignores him.

“Beej?” Ignores him again.

“Beej. Beej. BJ. Beej. Benjamin J– Janklin Hunnicutt. BJ. Beej.”

“Jesus Christ, Hawkeye, this better be good.”

“Do you think the little black things in bananas are tarantula eggs?”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Hawkeye holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Do you have to be such a child?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“For God’s sake, Hawk.”

“Come on, Beej, what’s eating you? You’ve been acting cagey all day. All week! Even cagier than usual, and that takes some beating.”

“It’s really nothing.”

“I swear to God if you don’t talk about your feelings right now I’m gonna punch a hole in our tent.”

“Maybe I’m just upset about being thousands of miles away from my family, surrounded by death, destruction, and starvation, and to top it all off my roommate who alleges to be thirty years old is actually more like twelve!”

“I’m thirty-one,” Hawkeye says, “and a half.”

“Very much proving my point.”

“Come on, if that’s all that was upsetting you, you’d be like this all the time.” Hawkeye smirks. “You can tell me, Beej. I’m very trustworthy. They erected a plaque in my honor outside Fort Knox in honor of how well-guarded my secrets are.”

“You couldn’t keep a secret if it was sewn into your underwear.”

“What do you mean? I’ve kept more secrets than you’ve had hot dinners, Hunnicutt.”

BJ very much doubts that. He throws down his book but keeps his tone genial.

“Oh, yeah? Tell me one thing I don’t already know about you, Hawkeye.”

“Fine.” Hawkeye swivels around and plants his sock feet on the dirty floor. “The first girl I ever kissed had three front teeth.”

“She did not!”

“They used to call her ‘Threaver.’”

“Hawkeye.”

“Okay, she didn’t.”

“You can’t do it, can you?”

“Can you?”

“Me what?”

“Tell me something. Something I don’t know.”

BJ opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

“I’m claustrophobic,” Hawkeye says.

“I’m afraid of heights,” BJ counters.

Hawkeye looks betrayed. “You are not.”

“Spiders, then.”

“I’m allergic to peanut butter.”

“I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was twenty-five.”

“When I was seventeen the principal caught me behind the school getting a hand job from my lab partner.”

“I vomited on the Chief of Surgery’s desk at my first ever job interview.”

“I got evicted from my first apartment in Boston because my cat ate the intercom.”

“I’ve been having sex dreams about you!” BJ blurts out. The person he was even a month ago never would have admitted that. Hawkeye has changed him. He isn’t sure if he likes it.

“What?”

“I said–”

Hawkeye sighs. “Fine, you know what? Don’t tell me.” His voice is full of resignation, not anger. BJ’s seen Hawkeye angry a million times at a million different things, but never at him. He doesn’t know what he’d do if all that anger were ever coming his way. Hawkeye grabs one of his boots and starts unlacing it to put it on. BJ almost swan dives down to grab the other one and keep him there, but instead he just stands still and watches him leave. 

He almost wishes he’d told him he wasn’t lying. Almost. Maybe Hawkeye would have found it funny, would have erupted in manic spasms of his shrill, cackling laughter that was almost beautiful by virtue of being so joyous. Maybe he would have told him not to worry, that it definitely didn’t mean anything and probably happened to lots of guys. Maybe he would have tried to kiss him. BJ suddenly remembers he was supposed to be sensitive to the fact that Hawkeye might be in love with him. He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep all these balls in the air. Hawkeye’s the juggler, not him.

He’s also desperate to know if Hawkeye’s ever had a dream like that. Desperate to know if he’s had one about him, or about Trapper, and if dream-him is more fun than dream-Trap or not. And not because he wants any part of this to be replicated in real life. He just doesn’t want to feel alone anymore, and usually Hawkeye is good for that. He goes to sleep before Hawkeye comes back, and he dreams that he does. He dreams that he gets straight into bed with him and nuzzles into his neck and falls asleep, too.

And BJ doesn’t stop dreaming about Hawkeye. He dreams about him, and about Peggy, and next to nothing else. The dreams come so frequently and so vividly that sometimes BJ has to stop himself before referencing aloud something that actually only happened in a dream. The real-life Hawkeye has a dreamlike quality to him that makes it that much harder to distinguish him from the dream-Hawk, the only real difference being that real-life-Hawk uses his pretty mouth to talk a lot more than his counterpart. BJ clenches his jaw when he catches himself thinking of Hawkeye’s mouth as _pretty_. It’s not. It’s just a normal mouth. Peggy’s mouth is pretty. And the dreams are commonplace now, simply part of his reality. He doesn’t agonize over them, because they don’t bother him anymore. He has other things to agonize over, anyway.

Sometime around the time Hawkeye goes crazy over BJ not telling him his name, BJ decides he needs to see Hawkeye’s file. Ostensibly, BJ wants to surprise Hawkeye for his birthday, and for whatever reason Hawkeye gives him a nonsensical answer when he asks when it is (“Every third Monday in June”), so he steals Hawkeye’s file while Radar is in the latrine and reads it by flashlight in the supply tent.

(By the end of his second day (eternity) ever at the 4077th, BJ wants to spend as much time as possible with Hawkeye. He simply has to know what makes him tick. A week later Potter is asking him into his office to ask him the same question. All he knows about Hawkeye is what’s in his file.

“I’m… not sure I’m the best person to be asking, Colonel. I only got here a week ago.”

“You know, Hunnicutt, I saw that in your file and figured it must be a mistake.”

“Colonel?”

“Well, the way you boys talk to each other is like you’ve known one another for years. And it’s not as if a misprinted date on some orders is exactly outside the realm of possibility.”

“I guess not,” BJ says, with a smile and a nod. “Will that be all, sir?” He’s not sure why he’s so effusive with the _sirs_ and _Colonels_ except to make up for Hawkeye’s marked lack of decorum. As if what one of them does counts for both of them.

“Sure, Hunnicutt, you can go.” BJ turns to leave and Potter stops him at the door. “Actually, since I have you here…”

“Yes, Colonel?” BJ knows precisely what the colonel is going to say next. Maybe that’s what Radar feels like all the time.

“What _do_ you think Pierce is really like? I’m asking him in here next and I just don’t know what to expect. Man’s a firecracker but I can’t imagine what’s lighting his fuse so much.”

“Look, Colonel,” BJ sits back down and crosses one leg serenely over the other. “Hawkeye hates it here. He hates our whole reason for being here. And until that goes away, I think his fuse is going to stay lit.”

“I see,” Potter says stoically. If BJ were being uncharitable, he’d say he sounded a tad disappointed, but he’ll give the colonel the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Maybe another fifteen minutes.

“I think… I think he hates suffering, and he likes to make people laugh, and that’s an easy enough philosophy to live by when you’re in civilian practice in Boston. But they put him, all of us, in a crazy place, and then they tell him he’s crazy for thinking it’s crazy. And that drives him…”

“You got all that in a week?”

BJ chooses to ignore that. “He seems like a good guy, Colonel. I’m looking forward to being able to tell you for sure.”)

Hawkeye’s birthday is in his file all right, August 21st, 1919. So is his hometown (Crabapple Cove, ME), his medical school (Columbia University), his parents’ names (Daniel Pierce, Dr., Hannah Pierce, Mrs. (d)), his hair color, eye color, height, and weight (black, blue, 6’2”, 175 lbs.), and a blank space under “religion.” There are about a million disciplinary citations and reports describing him as antithetical to everything the military stands for and utterly indispensable to the 4077th. He understands why it might drive Hawkeye slightly crazy, living as he does as a human contradiction.

Suddenly the room is flooded with light. BJ shields his eyes and when he finally uncovers them, Hawkeye is looking at him, quizzical, from the doorway.

“Whatcha doing there?” Hawkeye asks pleasantly.

“What are you doing here?” BJ responds.

“Asked you first.”

“Asked you second.”

“Came to get a band-aid. What’s so secret you have to read it clandestinely by candlelight?” Hawkeye says as he approaches BJ and tries to snatch the file out of his hand. BJ squirms and tries to hide it as Hawkeye paws at his arms– he really is spectacularly bad at fighting– until eventually Hawkeye wrests it from him and starts reading out loud before he realizes what he’s reading.

“Benjamin Franklin Pierce! U.S. 3… hey, that’s me.”

“It certainly looks that way.” Hawkeye holds up the file and makes a face since he knows that will be enough to convey his question. BJ shrugs. “Just trying to get to know you.”

“You know me,” Hawkeye says, running a hand through his hair to smooth it now that he’s mostly caught his breath.

“I wanted to know your birthday,” BJ says casually.

“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye says in the way that only Hawkeye says _uh-huh_.

“It’s August 21st,” BJ tells him, like he wouldn’t know. Hawkeye’s tense shoulders relax.

“I looked in your file,” he admits.

“I know.” He didn’t _know_ , precisely, until Hawkeye just told him, but he figured he would have.

“You didn’t even tell the army your name.”

“I know.” He knows Hawkeye’s insulted that he won’t tell him. He doesn’t want Hawkeye to be insulted, or for this to exacerbate his insecurity, and it eats BJ from the inside out that he can’t help Hawkeye on this one, but he can’t. He just can’t let him in that far. He can’t do anything that can’t be undone, in case he wants to leave this place behind for good when he leaves. Maybe it isn’t fair to Hawkeye. Maybe a lot of things aren’t fair to Hawkeye.

“Margaret keeps some booze hidden in the file cabinet behind you. You want some?” Hawkeye doesn’t wait for a response before getting it out and pouring them each a few shots worth in some specimen cups.

They sit cross-legged next to each other, leaning against some boxes, and drink. BJ makes a joke and Hawkeye laughs with his entire body, leaning uncontrollably into BJ’s side. His mirth is warm, and spectacular, and contagious. BJ puts an arm around Hawkeye while he’s still leaning in close. He can feel his pulse in his fingertips as he clutches Hawkeye’s bony shoulder. Having a friend like Hawkeye is like sitting at the top of a ferris wheel, exhilarating and calming at the same time, and the view is beautiful, but you’re about to lurch down any second. Margaret had told him not to get attached, that when Hawkeye went down he would take whoever was closest to him with him. BJ agrees with her now that that day is probably coming. He still hopes it’s him he takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the whole “do you think the black bits in bananas are tarantula’s eggs” exchange is shamelessly ripped from the mighty boosh bc boy. Howard and Vince have a hell of a dynamic. Also Hawkeye’s birthday is approx 9 months after armistice day bc I’m pretty sure that’s the vibe.
> 
> Up next: arriving at the crux of hawk and bj acting married <3


	3. present, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s7-10

Somewhere along the line, maybe it was after fifteen minutes, maybe it was after a day, Hawkeye and BJ seem to have become best friends. Sometimes BJ thinks it’s more like they’re two halves of the same whole, that saying their names separately sounds perfectly alien whereas _Pierce and Hunnicutt_ or _Hawkeye and BJ_ as they would have it is more like a word in the English language. BJ appreciates or doesn’t appreciate how that likens them to a married couple to different degrees depending on little else than the weather. But it seems like for the time being, for better or for worse, Hawkeye is his better half, or his other half at the very least, and he’s certainly not the only one who’s noticed that. They’re heading to post-op when someone’s noticed it.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. 4077th,” A Captain Chilton greets them as his jeep rounds the compound.

“Afternoon, Captain,” BJ says.

“What’s the word from the 8063rd?” Hawkeye says. Chilton rolls his eyes and grabs his duffel. Chief Surgeon at the 8063rd, Philip Chilton is decidedly more business than one Hawkeye Pierce and doesn’t always go for the antics at the 4077th, even if he is basically a regular guy.

“Just here to swap some gossip. New procedure ought to help with skin grafts, and given the number of kids we’re getting in with bad phosphorous burns, we’re all gonna need it.”

“I wish I hadn’t asked.”

“I imagine I’m billeting in the Swamp?”

“However unfortunately,” BJ answers. Who knows if Chilton was talking to Hawkeye? Having a conversation with the both of them is kind of like talking to one person, anyway.

“We’ve already got some visiting brass in the VIP tent,” Hawkeye says, completing BJ’s thought and proving his point.

“Lucky you,” Chilton says. “I’ve got a nurse, Lieutenant Greene, on her way. She’s pretty new, so try not to give her a hard time.”

“Be mean? To the green Lieutenant Greene?” Hawkeye says.

“We wouldn’t dream!” BJ finishes.

“Aren’t you two just a hoot and a half,” Chilton deadpans. “I’m serious, when are you gonna make it official?” he mutters just loud enough for them to hear as he takes his things into the Swamp. Hawkeye links his arm into the crook of BJ’s elbow and plays at swishing his hair back.

“Isn’t he a charmer?” Hawkeye says as BJ leads them into the hospital.

BJ grins. “ _I_ wouldn’t want to be stuck with us. We’re insufferable.”

It’s Hawkeye’s post-op shift but they work it together. Hawkeye really is an excellent doctor. Sometimes BJ forgets that, not because Hawkeye isn’t doing a good job, but because BJ spends so much time admiring him for his other qualities that he forgets the whole reason he’s here is because he’s an incredibly skilled surgeon. He’s a skilled surgeon, his patients love him, the nurses like working with him, and sometimes even Charles admits that he’s useful to have around. It’s almost painful that despite how much they all absolutely depend on him, he’s wasted in a place like this. He should be the beating heart of somebody’s memorial hospital in New England, the easygoing attending who cracks jokes while he shows interns the ropes and never lets anybody slip through his fingers. He should be in a place where he can love. It’s what he’s good at.

“Beej?” Hawkeye startles him from his reverie. He finds himself with a clipboard in his hands that maybe he was supposed to be reading.

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Hm? Nowhere, I was just, uh… thinking of home.”

“Happens to the best of us. Greene’s here.” Hawkeye gestures to the door where a slightly disheveled looking nurse has entered stage left.

“Shall we make an impression?”

“I’ll do Abbott. Hellooooo, Lieutenant,” Hawkeye says to her with the cheekiest of all possible smiles. “New in town? Looking for directions? I know a place where you can get a great cup of coffee, provided you only intend to use it to strip the paint off a jeep.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor,” she says, laughing, “but I’m just looking for Captain Chilton. Lieutenant Monica Greene, from the 8063rd.” She delicately holds out her hand for him to shake. She’s cute, with tawny blonde hair and blue-green eyes, and a little button nose that BJ would find adorable if he wasn’t finding it inexplicably infuriating. Her top teeth are slightly too big, giving the appearance of an overbite. Hawkeye shakes her hand, his eyes darting all over her pretty face.

“Hawkeye Pierce, jelly doughnuts. And this is my associate–”

“Pierce?” she interrupts him, “As in ‘Pierce and McIntyre?’ The other nurses have been telling me horror stories since I got here! You two are a couple of local legends, you know.”

“Sometimes it’s pronounced ‘Hunnicutt,’” BJ says, holding out his hand. “BJ.”

“McIntyre’s gone stateside,” Hawkeye explains in response to Monica’s confused expression, “So BJ’ll have to do.” Hawkeye taps him twice on the chest before he turns to give Monica directions. All BJ hears while Hawkeye finishes talking to her is his blood rushing in his ears.

“Whaddaya know? Trap’s reputation precedes you,” Hawkeye says casually as he resumes his rounds.

“Whaddaya know?” BJ repeats, flashing a smile that Hawkeye’s too busy to notice is forced. They take a private’s blood pressure and check for fluid in a Chinese prisoner’s NG-tube. It’s silent until they’re checking the tension on a South Korean sergeant’s tibia.

“You know I was joking, right?” Hawkeye says, “When I said you’d have to do.”

“Yeah, of course,” BJ says, a little too enthusiastically.

“Right,” Hawkeye says, just a hint of confusion behind his eyes. BJ wishes he could help him, he really does, but even he doesn’t know why his hackles rise immediately at the mention of Trapper’s name. He attacks the problem rationally while they finish Hawkeye’s shift. By the time they’re back in the Swamp, he has the answer.

“He hurt you,” BJ says once he and Hawkeye are safely seated on their separate cots, martinis in hand.

“What?” Hawkeye pops his olive between his teeth and chews with his mouth open.

“Trapper,” BJ explains. Hawkeye closes his mouth and swallows. Then he leans forward, his back so hunched it’s giving BJ phantom pains.

“Huh?” he says, looking utterly bewildered.

“That’s why I seemed weird. Before. I don’t like it, uh, when people hurt you.”

“And you think Trapper hurt me?”

“Maybe you don’t remember this, but I was there the day we met,” BJ goes on, wearing his year-old banal smile. “You were pretty heartbroken, sailor.”

“Heartbroken,” Hawkeye repeats, looking down.

“Utterly,” BJ says. He wishes they were sat closer so he could tilt Hawkeye’s face up with a finger under his chin. _Look at me_ , he implores him telepathically. _I’m trying to show you the love. Accept it, you idiot, accept it!_

Hawkeye looks up, but not wearing the face of someone who feels loved. He opens his mouth to speak, but Captain Chilton walks through the door and makes for the spare cot.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he says flatly. Hawkeye rises abruptly to get him a drink. BJ watches him move over the rim of his glass. Some days he has the grace of a prima ballerina, his long limbs sweeping him across rooms in only a few swift motions. Other days he looks like the lanky teenager he must have been fifteen years ago, like when he trips over his footlocker in both directions while delivering Chilton his gin.

“Smooth,” the captain says after he takes a sip, cracking a hint of a smile. BJ and Hawkeye glance at each other before returning it. One of the magical things about Hawkeye is that even people who don’t like him basically do like him. One of the mystifying things is that Hawkeye doesn’t even seem to know that. For all his bluster and posturing, sometimes he doesn’t even seem sure that the people who do like him do like him.

Sometimes BJ thinks he knows Hawkeye better than anyone he’s ever met before, better than either of them know themselves. Sometimes he thinks he doesn’t know the first thing about him, because to this day he does things that just baffle him. When he takes out Colonel Lacey’s healthy appendix, when he screams at BJ before he does it and when he even admits before he does it that he hates himself for it, that just baffles him. BJ doesn’t have a solitary thought that’s not about Hawkeye the entire time Hawk’s in the O.R. and he’s in the Swamp. He sits in the dark without him and thinks about what he’ll say when he gets back.

“I’m sorry,” he says the split second he hears the door open, because he needs to make sure he gets his thoughts in before Hawkeye talks.

“About what, sir?” says a voice that he wasn’t expecting. He turns around to see Radar in the doorway, clutching a clipboard in one hand and a pint of plasma in the other.

“Never mind. What is it, Radar?”

“Wounded, sir. Choppers, in about ten minutes.” Naturally.

“Got it. Thanks, Radar.”

“Sir,” Radar says quickly, and dashes off to his next destination. BJ sighs and stares at the door as it swings shut. He pours himself a drink that he doesn’t particularly plan on drinking. He’s just starting to swirl his olive around when Hawkeye comes in. His movements are heavy in a way BJ hasn’t seen before. He feels a sinking sensation like it’s his gut that’s just been operated on, not Lacey’s.

He tells Hawkeye what Radar said. He can tell Hawkeye wasn’t lying before, wasn’t just talking in the heat of emotion. He hates BJ, and he hates himself, and he hates this whole life here. But Sidney said strong emotions go together. Maybe you don’t get that kind of hate without love.

When the choppers come, BJ takes Hawkeye by the shoulder while he’s looking down. Hawkeye takes his arm in his hand and both of their pulses are skyrocketing from adrenaline. BJ holds him, because he knows that’s what Hawkeye needs, and Hawkeye holds him, because that’s what Hawkeye does, and then they go. Because that’s what they do.

Later, another time, call it a month, call it a year, call it a cab if you like, Hawkeye and BJ are taking a little road trip. They call it that because they’re in denial about being sent to Battalion Aid after a doctor and two medics bought it.

“All right, time to go,” Hawkeye taps the seat next to him, plastering a smile on his face even while his tone has hints of frantic.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” BJ says.

“What’s the problem, afraid of cars?”

“Uh, no, it’s your driving that alarms me, Captain.”

“Fine, you drive, I don’t care,” Hawkeye says in a show of mock defensiveness, since BJ knows he’d actually prefer not to. Hawkeye grins as he scoots over, the ease of their bickering relaxing him.

Hawkeye sings while BJ drives. BJ rolls his eyes and Hawkeye can tell he’s loving it.

“ _I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill! On Blueberry Hill when I found you!”_ Hawkeye plays at swooning into BJ’s lap and he shoos him away.

“Are you crazy, I’m driving!”

“ _The moon stood still on Blueberry hill and lingered until my dream came true!”_ Hawkeye continues belting, though he does push himself upright, then does the solo making brass-section noises through pursed lips.

“That’s pretty good, can you do a trumpet?”

“You wish. _The wind in the willow played love’s sweet melody, but all of those vows you made were never to be_.” On second thought, BJ hates it when Hawkeye sings.

“Have anything to eat? I’m starved.” BJ knows it’ll distract Hawkeye if he has to take care of him in some way.

“Sure, I brought some noshes.” He starts digging through his bag. “One tin of Charles’ caviar. Maybe not the best for on the road. Umm. Some cheese. A Hershey bar. Two Hershey bars. A pack of Rice Krispies. Some Oreos, a handful of raisins, a thermos of gin, and some Twizzlers. What’s your poison?”

“You didn’t bring any real food? I though you said you packed noshes?”

“These are noshes! Raisins and Rice Krispies is practically trail mix.”

“It is not. This is how you manage to be skinny, and unhealthy. You should eat more protein.”

“You’re worse than my dad. Find me an egg I can’t drink and I’ll eat it. Check this out. My impression of a turtle eating a worm.” Hawkeye tears open the pack of Twizzlers and eats one slowly, with his eyes crossed and his head back, struggling against how hard he’s making himself laugh, and BJ has to admit it’s an oddly good impression. For the moment before he has to get his eyes back on the road it’s almost like being on a normal car ride, doing what you can to pass the time and singing when the radio cuts out. Which is what Hawkeye is back to doing once he’s finished snacking. BJ nibbles on a Hershey bar when Hawkeye insists he eats something, not knowing that he wasn’t hungry to begin with.

“ _He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way, he had a boogie style that no one else could play_.” Hawkeye leans back and taps rhythmically on the passenger side door and the back of BJ’s seat while doing his version of all three Andrews Sisters at once. “ _He was the top man of his craft, but then his number came up and he was gone with the draft_.”

BJ joins in with as good a harmony as he can manage, “ _He’s in the army now, a-blowin’ reveille, he’s the boogie boogie bugle boy of Company B_.” Hawkeye’s grin when he and BJ are singing together makes so many things worth it.

BJ is nearly constantly in awe of Hawkeye’s continued ability to enjoy life. He knows he doesn’t enjoy it as such, but he derives joy from bringing it to others, which is just about the most beautiful thing BJ can imagine. At times like this, Hawkeye is his goddamn hero.

By the end of their shift at Battalion Aid, which is really more like fifteen shifts back to back to back to back toback toback toback toback toback toback toback toback toback toback toback, they’re exhausted, slumped against the wonky side of the building with only their flak helmets keeping them upright. They rest their heads against each other while BJ contemplates sleep, and holds off when he can hear that Hawkeye’s breathing isn’t slowing.

“You still awake?” BJ asks.

“Somehow,” Hawkeye answers.

“Not sleeping?”

“Not on purpose.”

BJ feels Hawkeye sigh. He knows he gets like this when they’ve had a particularly rough day (week, month, year, life) and he can’t seem to make himself shut his eyes.

“Tell me about yourself, Hawkeye,” BJ instructs.

“What?” he says, startled out of a yawn.

“I mean talk to me. About something you know. Tell me something about you I don’t already know.” He’s said it before, to Hawkeye, but with the opposite meaning. He knows now that there’s more to Hawkeye than he lets on. He’s starting to love the feeling in those moments when Hawkeye is letting him in a little deeper, when the story doesn’t end in a joke. When it’s just him.

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye says, his voice raw. “What do you want to know?” And he even sounds like he might actually tell the truth.

“Where did you live, before the war?” BJ asks, testing the waters.

“Boston, you know that. Outside Boston.”

BJ hesitates. Then, “What about New York?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what about when you were in school? Tell me about that.”

“How do you know I went to school in New York?”

The moment feels too tenuous for a joke, or a lie, even though BJ’s sure he could just say he remembers Hawkeye mentioning it.

“I read it in your file when I went looking for your birthday.”

“Ah.”

“So tell me about New York. I’ve never been. Take me on a day trip,” BJ says, closing his eyes and shifting a little so Hawkeye can lean more fully on him. He smiles serenely. This is what Hawkeye’s good at.

“Okay,” Hawkeye says, pressing his weight closer into BJ’s side. He’s sinewy, and thin, but he’s warm. Hawkeye has always made him comfortable. “We’ll meet at Grand Central Station, unless– where are you coming from?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you took Southern Pacific or something I’ll have to pick you up at Penn Station.” BJ opens his mouth to protest. “I’m not letting you _drive_ into _New York_.”

“I’ll meet you in Maine, then. We’ll go in together.”

“Beej, it’ll be twelve hours on the Greyhound!”

“Hawkeye, it does not matter how we _get there_! You always do this, just give me the fantasy.”

“Fine, fine.” Hawkeye pats his chest to calm him down, and takes a deep breath, in, and out. “If we meet at Penn Station we can take the train straight to the museum.”

“The museum?” BJ shifts again as distant shellfire starts. He moves his arm from between them to around Hawkeye and pulls him close as the explosions grow closer.

“The Natural History Museum,” Hawkeye explains, abandoning all pretense as the shelling gets even nearer, draping one of his legs over BJ’s and wrapping his arm around BJ’s middle. BJ doesn’t read into it. They’re just two scared people in the middle of a nightmare, and he doesn’t begrudge Hawkeye a little physical comfort. Besides, it’s nice to be held.

“The Natural History Museum,” BJ repeats. “Tell me about it. What exhibits do we see?”

“It’s my favorite museum in the whole city, I think. We had a friend who was doing marine biology who was a docent there, so she got us free entry whenever we wanted. I could spend all day just in the planetarium, or the room with the giant whale–”

“Ah, the room with giant whale.”

“Yeah, the room with the giant whale,” Hawkeye goes on. “But the best exhibit is definitely the dinosaurs.”

“God, you are such a child,” BJ says on a jubilant exhale.

“I love it there,” Hawkeye says into BJ’s chest. “They have whole skeletons put together, of course, and the big brontosaurus in the lobby, but upstairs in the exhibit they have real fossils out that you can touch, you know? You can hold tens of millions of years of history right there in your hand and it’s… I don’t know, it’s beautiful.” _You’re beautiful_ , BJ thinks before he knows what he’s thinking.

“Let’s get some lunch,” BJ says. “We haven’t eaten all day.”

“Good idea. I actually love bodega coffee. You ask for one sugar and they put in three, and it’s milky enough to feed to a baby. Not to mention the deli right across the street from the museum makes the best bacon, egg, and cheese in New York.” BJ’s mouth is already watering at the idea. “And then we can take a walk through the park and go to the Met.”

“The Met?”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art?”

“Oh, that Met.”

“Shut up,” Hawkeye says. “Uncultured swine.”

“Come on, what do we see there?”

“My favorite is the American Wing. I bet we could spend the whole afternoon there and not get bored.”

“Yeah?” BJ says, rubbing Hawkeye’s arm while he’s talking. He doesn’t even know if Hawkeye feels it. He might be numb from something.

“Definitely. I feel like I could spend the whole day in the first room in there; it’s this big open space with windows all along one giant wall, facing the park. If you go in the fall you can actually see foliage for a split second before it all just turns brown. And there are these pools with marble fountains that kids are always throwing coins in, and marble floors so you can hear your steps clacking as you walk. The back wall is this big facsimile of a classic, sort of, colonial mansion, but then it’s real! And you can go inside and they have all sorts of original furniture and paintings, beautiful antique stuff, ornate china, these incredible, delicate little trinkets, and you just think about all the handiwork, all the hours spent meticulously painting these tiny little details… makes our work seem that much messier.”

“Those people had a little more time on their hands.”

“And a lot less blood.”

“Hawk.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” He fidgets with one of BJ’s buttons. He stops and looks up, smiling. “After that we can see the mummies.”

BJ’s back to laughing. “Very sophisticated.”

“Hey, I’m a complex person. I contain multitudes.”

“I know.”

Hawkeye is slightly magnificent when he waxes poetic like that, about things that he loves, places he’s been. It reminds BJ that he’s a real person, with a real life outside of this place, and people and things to go back to once they get out of here, just like BJ. And that Hawkeye’s always felt strongly about things, always felt deep love for things worth feeling deep love for. It makes BJ feel like he’s not special, since Hawkeye’s love isn’t just deep, but also broad, but on the other hand, it is him that he’s chosen. When Hawkeye loves, he really loves, and it can be overwhelming to be on the receiving end of it. It’s not overwhelming now.

“Okay,” BJ says, “where do we go next.”

“We spent the whole afternoon at the museum, right?”

“Sure.”

“So if we get on the train now we can watch the sunset from Brighton Beach.”

BJ pictures a map of New York. “Isn’t that in Brooklyn? Surely that faces east.”

“Since when do you know so much about it? Just shut up and pretend.”

“Okay, okay. What do we do there?”

“It’s too cold for swimming since it’s almost dark, but we can dip our toes in the sea.”

“How about dinner?” BJ also knows Hawkeye loves to talk about food. His mind wanders to wondering if Hawkeye will cook them breakfast the morning after this adventure.

“Hot dogs and funnel cake on the boardwalk, I think. And I’ll get you something from the soda fountain, my treat.”

“How romantic.”

“My specialty. Oh, wait, but if we want to go on the Cyclone we should go before we eat.”

“Naturally.”

He feels Hawkeye nodding against him.

Hawkeye goes on, “We can make sandcastles.”

“Skip stones.”

“Kiss at the top of the Wonder Wheel.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“That’s why I’m there,” Hawkeye says, his voice carrying undertones of _you idiot_.

“Thank God for that.” He gives Hawkeye a squeeze and notices that the shelling has stopped. He relaxes his grip. The spots where Hawkeye is still touching him start to grow warm under the pressure and BJ takes care to remind himself that it’s normal to feel strange in various life or death situations. Hawkeye is still deep in the fantasy.

“The view is so beautiful from up here,” he says. “I never want to see the Pacific Ocean again.”

BJ only has the energy to feel marginally insulted.

“Come on, it’s getting late. When are we getting back to your place? What’s the neighborhood even like?” BJ pesters him with the questions, even nudges him with his foot.

“Would you relax? Drink your NeHi and eat your Coney Island.”

BJ laughs, one short barked sound, and it’s the only noise for miles. Everyone else at the aid station is fast asleep. They could do anything in the world that they wanted. Which is why they’re at the top of a ferris wheel in Brooklyn, because that is sort of where Hawkeye always lives. He lives there and he lives on a scraggly cove in Maine and he lives in an on-call room in a hospital half way between Boston and Worcester in much the same way BJ lives in a house in Mill Valley and in pizzerias in Sausalito and on the third floor balcony of a frat house in Palo Alto. Everybody who’s here is really someplace else, which is too bad, because in this moment BJ thinks he would follow Hawkeye anywhere.

“Once we’re down, we can go home,” Hawkeye says. “I used to live uptown, in Harlem, near school, with a couple of my friends. But I always wanted to live downtown, in the village, maybe, or SoHo. Shack up with an artist and get into one of those lofts, you know.”

“You, with an artist?”

“Just for a little while,” Hawkeye says, yawning again. “You know you’re the only man for me.”

BJ holds his breath for a moment, to try to stop himself from trembling. It must just be the exhaustion, the adrenaline draining from his system, since he’s shaking and he doesn’t know why. He feels Hawkeye start to fall asleep against him, like he’d hoped. For Hawkeye’s sake, that is.

“Let’s live downtown, then. If it’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“Yes,” Hawkeye says slowly, as his eyes finally close. “Let’s.”

When they get up they don’t talk about it. BJ can’t even tell how much Hawkeye remembers, he was so wired the previous night. They don’t talk about it, and they drive back to camp just the way they arrived: singing, eating junk food, bickering worse than BJ ever has with Peg. Getting to know Hawkeye can be like taking one step forward and two steps back every time. Just when BJ thinks he’s made a breakthrough, the boulder rolls back down the hill. 

One thing that BJ knows for sure about Hawkeye, well, one thing that anyone who’s met him for more than fifteen seconds knows about Hawkeye, is that he absolutely hates the army. For all the ways Hawkeye has ever confused him, this has been a constant fact. So when a colonel comes on an inspection tour, chews out Kellye and Gwen in front of everybody, makes Klinger take his earrings off, and even tells BJ he doesn’t want to see him again unless he’s out of his filthy Chucks, it doesn’t surprise him in the slightest when Hawkeye has a plan to get back at him.

“We’re gonna box him in,” Hawkeye tells him conspiratorially in the mess tent.

“What?”

“Trap him in his tent.”

“Why?”

“If he’s so dead set on fitting all of us into his little army boxes, we’re gonna show him precisely how that feels, find out how much he likes it.”

BJ rolls his eyes and holds back his smile. “That’s crazy. One day those wax wings of yours are gonna melt, you know.”

“Not today, Daedalus. Ask me how.”

“Fine. How?”

Which is how ten hours later, in the middle of the night, they’re stacking stones from beside the minefield a dozen high into a sort of castle wall outside the door to the VIP tent. Except without any good mortar substitute they don’t quite fit together and keep sliding down, threatening to crush their toes and preventing them from even getting close to accomplishing what Hawkeye set out to do. Hawk's breathing is ragged and his hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. He’s never looked happier to be alive.

“I’d say we’re very much pissing into the wind on this one,” he says as he as BJ take a break and lean against their creation, only four of the necessary six feet tall.

“And yet that doesn’t stop you.” BJ can’t help from grinning when Hawkeye gets like this, no matter how often he scolds him for it.

“I’m a sucker for an uphill battle. Why let Sisyphus have all the fun?”

“Beats me,” BJ says. Panting, they go back to shifting rocks.

Hawkeye is absolutely in his element when he’s sticking it to the man. What’s equal part painful and perfect is that sometimes he seems like he actually thinks he might change things through all the crazy stunts he pulls, might be able to save everybody. Sometimes BJ thinks things are never going to change, but he wouldn’t dare say that to Hawkeye. He doesn’t know what it would do to him.

The day after BJ goes crazy about Peg’s working at the cafe, things have basically settled down. The approximate 24-hour drama cycle they maintain at the 4077th has completed and things can go back to normal. After breakfast when they go back to the Swamp BJ is still stewing, but Hawkeye doesn’t need to know that.

So Peg has a job. It doesn’t bother him on principle, like Margaret seems to think. It bothers him because he made a promise to be there for Peg which he is demonstrably breaking every day. It’s not his fault, but he’s still doing it. Hawkeye catches him staring into the middle distance and asks if he’s okay, the fink. He sits on the edge of BJ’s cot with a half-finished crossword puzzle in his hand.

“Of course I am.”

“You’re spiraling, Beej. You always do this.” Hawkeye always does this, too, thinks he wants to know what BJ’s problem is then calls him stupid for worrying about it. But he always gives him one more chance, because once Hawkeye’s decided he’s going to get something out of you he doesn’t let up until he has. So he talks.

“I just can’t stop playing out all these scenarios in my head. I know you don’t… know what it’s like but it’s just– if she’s getting a job and she’s taking care of everything, then she really doesn’t need me anymore. It’s not like I think she’s gonna _leave me_ or something but if she doesn’t need me then–”

“Relax, would you. I need you, okay?” Hawkeye says like he’s just trying to get him to shut up. He doesn’t get it. He couldn’t possibly.

“Fuck off, you know that’s not the same.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s so goddamn different about it?”

“You’re not my wife, Hawkeye,” BJ says through clenched teeth, partially because he means it and partially because he knows it’ll get a rise out of Hawkeye. Hawkeye stands and paces in a small panicked circle before turning back to him.

“I’m nobody’s wife, BJ, but you better believe you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I would do without you!”

“Asshole. You’d be fine.” He really wouldn’t, but BJ can’t seem to make himself really hear him. BJ moves to get a drink from the still despite the early hour, but Hawkeye takes him by the shoulders and continues to spit compliments at him with vitriol.

“Listen! You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re an amazing husband and father. Peg and Erin are beyond lucky to have you!”

Within a split second BJ is overcome by something he can’t identify, grabs Hawkeye’s face in his hands, kisses him, realizes what he’s doing, and sharply pulls away.

“Hawkeye, I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”

“This isn’t a damn movie, BJ! It’s you, and it’s me, and it’s us, and it’s something different!” Hawkeye takes a step back, seemingly realizing that he and BJ were still clutching each other. “I think you have to get okay with being different. If you can’t, then… I don’t know, Beej. I just don’t know.”

BJ doesn’t fucking know either. Hawkeye doesn’t know how easy he has it, knowing from the jump that things were going to be different for him. BJ wants to be close to him, knows he’s the only person on the planet that might be able to help him with how he’s feeling, and makes a minuscule movement toward him, leading with his chest like their hearts are literally being drawn together like magnets. Instead, when he moves, he moves to leave, pushing past Hawkeye and seeing him turn to watch him go in his periphery. He doesn’t want this, he tells himself. _You don’t want this. You can’t._

He wants it. He can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So: “Drink your nehi and eat your coney island” is from paper moon and my dad quotes it at me all the time, the “it’s your driving that alarms me” bit is from star trek, and there’s another scene ripped from the boosh - when they’re driving and hawkeye only brings junk food - I watched that scene the other day and the beejhawk vibes were off the chart. 
> 
> Who knows how similar the met and natural history museum were in the 50s to what they’re like now, but those are all real exhibits near and dear to my heart, and there did used to be a deli across the street from the museum that made a pretty serviceable bacon egg and cheese but it’s since closed. rip. Also, coney island is basically a rip off but I do recommend going on the wonder wheel if you ever get the chance bc it’s classic. 
> 
> Oh, also, I’m @crickelwood on Tumblr if you want to say hi :)
> 
> Up next: friendships with Margaret!! Golden trio!! My heart, exploding


	4. present, part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s10-11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if I said I wrote a version of their life after the war in slide on the ice no I didn’t <3 by which I mean I usually lowkey set all my fics in the same universe like so many Kurt Vonnegut novels but they are officially no longer going to be compatible with each other. So it goes. Also sorry to string yinz along but I had to separate the end into more chapters since it didn’t feel right to lump it together with this one. hopefully it’ll be worth it :-)
> 
> Also warning for, like, the events of GFA

BJ leaves the Swamp, where Hawkeye is presumably still standing, kissed and confused, and waiting for him to come back. There is absolutely no one on Earth that BJ wants to talk to except for Hawkeye Pierce, and he’s not even sure he wants to talk to him. It’s eight in the morning, but he goes into the Officers’ Club since at least he knows he’ll be alone.

Wrong again. Margaret is there, sitting at the bar, staring so intently at a letter that she doesn’t even hear him storm in. He gasps involuntarily with a hand on his chest.

“Margaret!”

“Ah!” she gives a startled little yell. “BJ! What the hell are you doing in here, it’s eight o’ clock in the morning!”

“I didn’t think there would be anyone in here!” he says, too loud. “I didn’t think there would be anyone in here,” he repeats, quieter. Margaret smooths her hair.

“Yes. Well. I can understand that.”

He stands there, near the doorway, practically gaping at her and not knowing what to do with his hands. Even if she forgave him at breakfast, she might still be harboring a grudge from the night before. It’s been known to happen.

Maybe she can tell it’s something different bothering him now, or maybe it’s just hard to stay mad at BJ Hunnicutt, but she relaxes her glare.

“What are you waiting for? Have a seat, Captain.” He joins her at the bar. “What’ll you have?”

“Whatever you’re having,” he says, “in a pint glass.”

“That bad, huh?” she says, pouring him a shot of something brown. They sit in silence for a long moment. Margaret doesn’t seem to be interested in digging into his business. How refreshing.

“Do you remember what you told me when I first got here?” BJ finally says. “About Hawkeye?” Being with Hawkeye (not _with_ him, but with him) has made BJ too open. He used to be such an expert at playing the delicate balance between what can and can’t be said. 

“If I recall correctly, I told you to stay away from him.”

“And look at us now.”

“I also told you that you wouldn’t be able to. Pierce is magnetic, I know that. Even when I hated him I loved him.”

It amazes BJ how casually she throws around that word, probably since she knows no one in their right mind would think she harbored anything like romantic sentiments toward Hawkeye.

“Sidney told me once that he thinks he’s a very lovable person.”

Margaret raises her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “You needed Sidney to tell you that?”

“He also told me he thought I loved him.”

“You needed Sidney to tell you _that?_ No wonder you’re so paranoid about Peg, you must be the most clueless man I’ve ever met. And that includes Frank Burns.”

BJ visibly cringes. “Oy.” Another mannerism adopted from Hawkeye. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, giving his arm a light stroke. “It’s just– well, it should be obvious that your friendship is very special. It’s important to hold on to that.” Margaret folds her letter and repetitively deepens the crease while she talks.

“Margaret, do you ever feel so close to having what you want, and then you just sort of let it slip through your fingers?”

Margaret stares at him like he’s being very stupid.

“You were here, weren’t you, when I got married and divorced in the span of six months?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not really what you wanted, was it?”

Margaret looks shocked for a moment, and opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again and rolls her eyes. She looks back down at her letter and traces the edges with her finger.

“Maybe not,” she says.

“Married life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

It’s not that BJ doesn’t like being married to Peg. It’s not even that marriage isn’t supposed to be hard. It just isn’t supposed to be this hard. BJ takes another page out of Hawkeye’s book and blames the war.

“You jackass, didn’t you listen to a word I said last night?” Margaret says, her gaze painfully withering.

“I know, I know, the fact that I’ve got the most to miss means I’ve got the most. I heard you. Really, I did, I just–”

“You know what makes it worse, BJ Hunnicutt? It’s that despite everything, despite everything you say and everything I’ve been through, I still envy you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Your perfect little family in your perfect little house. Your perfect little daughter and your perfect little wife.”

Margaret says _wife_ with the same ease as Hawkeye so often says _husband_. BJ tries not to notice.

“It’s not perfect, Margaret. It’s not!” he goes on to prevent her from disagreeing. “And I don’t mean I think my marriage is falling apart because my wife had to get a job, I know Peg can handle herself. I mean it’s my fault. I’m messing everything up, okay? And it’s nobody’s problem, I don’t want anybody in my business, but that’s what’s happening, and if everybody would just leave me alone maybe I could figure out how to deal with it.” 

To her credit, Margaret doesn’t pry. She just keeps fidgeting with the crease in her letter, smoothing it so many times BJ is worried the paper will tear.

“Let me just say one thing,” Margaret says, and looks him straight in the eye. “Whatever this issue you’re having is, whatever big mistake you think you’re making, Peg will like it a whole lot better if you’re honest with her about it than if you try to slip away secretly. She’ll never respect you again if you don’t tell her the truth.”

_She’ll never respect me if I do._

“Thanks, Margaret,” BJ says. “That’s really good advice.”

They hear the door open behind them and are as startled as when BJ arrived. It’s Hawkeye. It’s Hawkeye?

“Beej!” he says excitedly, precisely the way he would have if this morning had gone normally. “Knew I’d find you here.”

“How the hell–”

“It’s the one place you can count on to be empty so early in the morning,” Hawkeye explains as he takes the seat next to BJ and pours himself a glass, too.

“And what am I, chopped liver?” Margaret says.

“You… were a surprise.” Hawkeye pops a handful of peanuts into his mouth. “But a very pleasant one.” Margaret rolls her eyes.

“You, uh… you doing okay, Hawk?”

“Never better.”

“Right.” Turns out maybe Hawkeye is better at playing BJ’s own game than he thought. He probably thinks BJ wants to pretend none of that ever happened, and he would be right. Absolutely right. Hawkeye must just wants things to go back to normal. And that, BJ can deliver.

“Trouble in paradise?” Margaret mutters.

“Yes! Beej and I are thinking of getting a divorce, can you recommend a good lawyer?” BJ and Margaret both give Hawkeye the same look of abject disgust. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Hawkeye taps Margaret on the arm. “Come on. I just realized I’ve known you for almost three years and I don’t know the first thing about you.”

BJ gives Hawkeye a pointed look that Margaret can’t see, just to let him know he’s pushing it. What does he think he’s playing at, doing their bit with Margaret? BJ tries to remind himself that he’s not a jealous person, except he definitely is, so he tries instead to remind himself that Hawkeye isn’t a person he has the right to be jealous over.

“What the hell are you talking about, Pierce?”

“I don’t know, tell me about your hometown. I don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t have a hometown,” Margaret says, taking a sip of her drink. “Army brat, remember?”

“Yes, I _know_ that, Margaret, but you must have been born someplace. It’s okay, don’t tell me, I’ll guess. Dubuque, Iowa. Juneau, Alaska. Big Fork, Montana. Calcutta. Oaxaca. Stop me if I’m getting warm.”

“Monterey, California!” Margaret cries, just to get him to shut up. “Dad was stationed at Fort Ord when I was born.”

“Was it nice? Do you know the area, Beej?”

“I don’t remember it, Pierce,” Margaret says before BJ can answer. “We’d already moved twice before I started kindergarten.”

Hawkeye isn’t stumped for longer than a second. “Well, where was your favorite place you ever lived? I’m an old softie so I usually say Crabapple Cove, but sometimes… It’s hard to pick. New York is up there. The best Korean food I ever had was at this little hole in the wall on West 31st street–”

“Would you stop babbling for one second if I promise to talk? Korean food…”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Hawkeye says with the enthusiasm of a little kid who’s just been promised a bedtime story. He nuzzles up to BJ’s side as if trying to get closer to hear Margaret, but all BJ can feel is Hawkeye’s arm against his, his nose a little too close to the sensitive part of BJ’s neck, and his eyelashes batting as he waits expectantly. Nope. He does not understand Hawkeye at all. BJ and Margaret take simultaneous slugs of their drinks while she gathers her thoughts.

“I guess… when I was about fourteen we were living in San Antonio. I had a couple of friends there, girls that I’d met when we were younger, and we all just happened to be in Texas together for the year, and I–” she stops herself, and flattens the crease in her letter again. “I’m not like you, Hawkeye. You love places, and things, and boy, you love them so much. I mean, do you have any idea how it makes me feel, hearing you talk about all those glamorous places you’ve lived? About your home, those beautiful, idyllic scenes? The way you talk about your father?” Her breath catches as she says the last word. BJ can practically feel Hawkeye’s jaw clenching in guilt.

“Margaret, I–”

“Maybe your life is divided up by the places you’ve lived, but mine is by the people I’ve been with. The people I’ve…” she trails off, stopping herself again.

“Tell us about the people, then,” Hawkeye says softly. “The people you’ve loved.”

“Better not,” Margaret says, taking her tightly folded letter between two fingers. “Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You can say that again,” BJ says, practically involuntarily. He really hasn’t been himself since Peg’s letter. Staking his wedding ring, hustling pinball, kissing Hawkeye. So out of character. He knows without looking that Hawkeye’s stare is piercing into the back of his head.

“Is that so, Beej?”

“No, I just–”

“Everybody is so grumpy this morning! Well, Ol’ Doc Pierce and Son’s Traveling Medicine Show has the cure, the prescription, the panacea for what ails you.”

“What’s that, Pierce?”

“Shots all around,” he says, snaking his way behind the bar and placing another couple of bottles in front of them, “and a bona fide game of Truth or Dare.”

Margaret and BJ both roll their eyes.

“This isn’t high school, Pierce,” Margaret chides him.

“It’s about as infantile,” Hawkeye retorts.

“Not this again,” she says.

“What, pacifism?”

“All right, children,” BJ says. Maybe Hawkeye loves him because he’s a peacemaker. “I definitely need cheering up. Come on, Margaret. Truth or dare?”

Hawkeye must know he’s treading in dangerous waters here, but then again, when isn’t he? Besides, BJ is morbidly curious to see where he plans for this to take them.

As it turns out, Hawkeye’s motives seem remarkably un-ulterior. Before BJ knows it, the three of them are cackling with laughter, screaming anecdotes, and planning pranks alone in the O-Club like the whole world belongs to them.

“Okay, Hawkeye,” BJ says, his words just about slurring. It’s barely noon but he’s more drunk than he can remember being in a long time. Maybe since Radar left. “Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye,” he says. The one word he can always say no matter what.

“What?”

“Tr– Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“You always pick dare!” BJ and Margaret both shout.

“Fine!” Hawkeye relents. He’s sitting up on a table, leaning back on his hands with his feet on a chair. “Truth.”

“Tell me about the first girl you ever loved.” BJ is so careful to say _girl_ that he forgets to say _us_. Hawkeye laughs and looks down.

“It’s like you’re trying to find out if I have a type or something. I do, by the way. Blond hair, blue eyes, and married by the time I have a real shot with them.” He looks up and winks at Margaret who’s leaning with her elbows against the bar.

“Pierce!” she whines, “Just tell us about her.”

“Fine,” Hawkeye says again. He taps his fingers on the table behind him. He shifts, and crosses his legs, then uncrosses them, then moves them off the chair and sits criss-cross-applesauce.

“Hawkeye, why’re you stalling?” BJ says.

“It’s a man’s prerogative to stall,” Hawkeye says. “Her name was Julie. We both used to deliver prescriptions on our bicycles over the summer. She lived a few towns over in Wicasset so I only saw her at work. Ten minutes at the beginning of the day and Ten minutes at the end. She wanted to be a nurse.”

“Sounds steamy,” BJ says.

“We were fifteen.”

Margaret reaches behind her to where BJ is supposedly tending the bar and slaps him lightly on the arm.

“What happened?” she asks.

“One summer, I asked her out, but it was already the end of August. We made out for an hour every day behind the drug store after our shifts for two weeks, and then she didn’t speak to me all year. I wrote her a couple of times, even had Lisa Kaplan drive me to her town to see if I’d run in to her, but I never saw her. But I thought about her basically every day, so when the next summer she wanted to go back to how we were, of course I said yes.”

 _I’m easy_. BJ has heard Hawkeye describe himself like that a million times. It dawns on him that it’s just as true emotionally as physically. Hawkeye gives his heart away as freely as his body. BJ all but kicks himself under the bar for the times he’d taken advantage of that.

“You just let her treat you like that?” Margaret says, vocalizing all the things BJ’s afraid to. Hawkeye shrugs.

“I think I loved her.”

“You think?” BJ and Margaret both say.

“I was a kid! Of course I _think_. What’s love when you’re a kid, anyway?”

“Peg and I got married at eighteen.”

“And I’m sure we’ll come on to that later. For now it’s Margaret’s turn.” Hawkeye propels himself from his perch and makes for the bar. BJ’s already poured him a drink by the time he’s traveled the ten feet.

“Not so fast, Mister, you didn’t finish telling us about Julie!” Margaret clutches at the fabric of Hawkeye’s over-shirt as she implores him to continue. Hawkeye sighs and downs his shot.

“At the end of the summer I asked if she’d go with me, like, actually go with me. She said yeah. So I’d get a ride to Wicasset or she’d get one to Crabapple and after a month she left me for a boy from her school. So it goes.”

BJ and Margaret share a glance that Hawkeye doesn’t see, since he told his entire story to his tumbler. BJ can’t recall ever feeling this much animosity toward a sixteen-year-old girl. Combined with the fact that despite the alleged sanctity of the game, he’s still not sure Hawkeye’s being honest about the story. Hawkeye goes on before he has a chance to express either of those thoughts.

“All right, Margaret, your turn. Truth or dare?” Hawkeye looks up smiling, even if his eyes are still plenty sad. Margaret looks between the two of them and takes a deep breath.

“Truth,” she says almost solemnly.

“First girl you ever loved?” BJ suggests. Margaret lets out her breath in a sharp exhale, half laughter and half shock.

“Beej…” Hawkeye rolls his eyes fondly. “How about this, would you have been friends with us if you knew us in real life, do you think?”

She takes a step toward Hawkeye, leaning into his shoulder as she thinks.

BJ’s always known boys like Hawkeye and girls like Margaret. Boys who live only for the sound of other people’s laughter and girls who have to sustain themselves on the shreds of respect they can glean from the men around them. Boys and girls who deserve so much more than the world is giving them. Then again, he’s never met anyone like either of them before.

“I… I don’t know,” she says. “I feel like _I_ would have become different if I’d met you when I was younger. It took me a year, more, before I would even think of considering you a friend,” she tells Hawkeye. He smiles knowingly and laughs under his breath.

“You consider me a friend?”

She swats his arm. “Of course I do, you idiot. Sometimes I even wish I’d met you sooner. We would have gotten along when I was in college. I used to laugh all the time, all my friends were such cut ups. Then somewhere along the line, I don’t know.” She takes another sip. “I changed. Hardened. I had to. I had to take myself seriously or else nobody else would. Sometimes I wish you, or somebody like you, although I’m sure that person doesn’t exist, had been there when I was starting out. Someone to remind me of the insanity of it all.”

Some of the kindness has drained from Hawkeye’s expression. His fingers are splayed tensely on the bar.

“I never would have been in a place like that,” he says. BJ resents the use of the singular pronoun. But he also knows there are things about Margaret and Hawkeye’s relationship that he’ll never understand since they’d already been through so much shit by the time he got there. 

“Oh, come on, Pierce. Could you even imagine me a year ago telling you I’m glad to know you?”

That makes Hawkeye smile again.

“You really are going to be my best nemesis forever, aren’t you?”

“I think I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Margaret says, a wide grin growing on her face. “All right, BJ, your turn to get sentimental. Truth, or truth?”

BJ scoffs. “Dare!”

“Nuh-uh, Beej,” Hawkeye says. BJ wonders if this is how people feel when he and Hawkeye gang up on them. “You owe us.”

BJ steels himself. At least it’s Margaret’s turn to ask a question. Hawkeye is far too much of a wild card for him to have let it get this far.

“Okay,” BJ says casually. “Truth.” 

“Okay, Mister I-Got-Married-At-Eighteen,” Margaret says. “How did you know Peg was the one?” BJ’s intrigued that both Hawkeye and Margaret want to know the same things about him, though presumably for different reasons. Margaret has flirted with him a grand total of once and is probably more interested in his strategies for making a marriage last than wondering how open he is to fucking it up.

“I didn’t,” BJ says. He tries not to look like he’s watching for changes in Hawkeye’s expression. “We were just kids. I got lucky.”

“Lucky,” Hawkeye repeats. “Looks like your luck’s just about run out,” he says, looking around him at the tattered remains of the O-Club.

“Don’t remind me,” BJ says.

“That’s really beautiful, Hunnicutt, you know?” Margaret says earnestly, “That you two could just have a good feeling about it and then make it work for ten years.”

“Eleven,” BJ says, “last May.” It’s an anniversary he’s never going to forget.

“Then again, the day I left Donald I felt just about as happy as the day I married him. And just about as sad, too. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign from the beginning.”

“I can usually tell when I meet someone if it’s going to last,” Hawkeye says. BJ wonders what he was thinking when they first met. Actually, he remembers. He was thinking about Trapper.

“You know I’ve never broken up with anyone?” Hawkeye goes on. “Not really, I mean. There was that time, a couple of years ago, one spring they called a ceasefire and I called it off with these nurses I was sort of _seeing_ but it wasn’t really, you know–” BJ cuts him off.

“I’ve never broken up with anyone, either.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hawkeye runs his finger along the rim of his glass, stopping just before it starts to hum. “You’ve also never been dumped.”

“I guess I don’t get around.”

“But you know what it means, right? It means everyone I’ve ever loved loved me less than I loved them, you know?”

BJ wants to get down on his knees and beg Hawkeye to stop speaking. _No!_ He wants to scream. _I love you in a way there aren’t any words for! I love you more than I thought was possible for one person to love another. And listen to yourself, it’s still not enough for you._

“I’ll never dump you,” he says, and by God he actually means it.

“Me neither!” Margaret agrees.

“You’d have a lot of trouble dumping me, seeing as we aren’t together,” Hawkeye says. It’s a catch-all response for both of them but BJ can’t help feeling targeted. But it doesn’t matter how Hawkeye feels about him. It doesn’t even matter if they feel the same way about each other. It simply isn’t something that happens. Never mind in the Swamp that morning; it’s impossible, just like everything else around there.

“What the hell is going on here?!” A voice cuts through BJ’s morose stewing.

“Colonel!” Hawkeye greets him. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth or what now? What the hell is the matter with you all? It’s,” he checks his watch, “one-thirty in the blessed afternoon!”

And so the impromptu gab session and soul-baring are cut short as Potter orders them back to quarters to sober up. BJ leads Hawkeye back to the swamp on his arm, and he knows he must be hurting, but he also knows he must have been hurting the whole time. And he can’t believe he’s been the one hurting him, but he doesn’t know what the hell to do about it when if he tries to get Hawkeye to talk he deflects like he’s got aluminum siding.

Which is why things go back to normal, whatever twisted version of normal they’ve been forced to accept by virtue of being there. Some days BJ thinks it’s starting to take its toll on Hawkeye. And not just because the bags under his eyes are as gray as his hair, but because sometimes Hawkeye seems like he’s holding on by even a thinner thread than usual, like one wrong move and the whole thing might come crashing down. Sometimes BJ hates to be right.

The way things go down on the bus obviously isn’t ideal. But BJ doesn’t notice or doesn’t even have time to notice how badly Hawkeye is taking it until O.R., and even then he doesn’t really know what’s happening. He just hears commotion, Hawkeye wrestling with the anesthesia machine, cries of “Pierce!”, “Hawkeye!” and “What the hell!” and Potter all but bodily escorting him out of the room still in an apron, for once not stained with the blood of children.

It’s an hour, maybe two hours later when they hear the crash. BJ assumes it’s mortar fire, though it’s both too close and not loud enough for that really to have been it. It’s only when they hear the scream, the high pitched shriek of an off duty nurse, that people start to wonder. And it’s not until Bigelow rushes in, hastily shoving a mask in front of her face as she does, that people start to worry.

“BJ, it’s Hawkeye,” she pants, her eyes full of confusion and panic. If anything, she should have reported to the colonel specifically, but she’s not acting as an army nurse just then, just as a person who knows who cares the most about what happens to Hawkeye. BJ just barely sees Potter give him the nod to go before he darts out of the room, stripping his gloves off so violently that they snap and leave a red mark on the inside of his forearm.

“Charles, finish for me!” he remembers to yell as Margaret trails behind him, too shocked even to remove her mask. Margaret screams when she sees the wreck.

“Shit,” BJ whispers. “Hawkeye!” He runs toward toward the jeep, flings planks of wood aside and takes Hawkeye’s cheek in his hand, drawing his gaze toward him but unable to make him focus. “Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye,” he says. It’s the only thing he can say.

“What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?” Hawkeye idly mumbles, a flirty smile falling across his lips. He winks in BJ’s direction.

“Hawkeye, what’s the matter with you,” BJ says desperately. “Where are you?” Nothing. His eyes start to glaze over. “Come back to me, come back to me, come on!”

He climbs into the jeep with him. He holds his head against his chest and drapes his own apron over him to keep him warm. Sidney is there within the hour to take him away, to pry Hawkeye from him like his last breath, his last inkling of hope before he’s plunged into despair forever. And BJ doesn’t even get the luxury of a break from reality; he left one patient bleeding in O.R. and there’s at least half a dozen more still waiting. And they’re down a surgeon.

When Hawkeye is in Sidney’s hospital (the funny farm, the loony bin, all the horrendous euphemisms he’s going to have to deal with for the rest of his life), there is absolutely nothing BJ can do. He can’t stand it, the helplessness, and he feels so rotten he wants to crawl out of his skin or bury himself in the sand, anything to relieve the perpetual pins and needles that he can’t shake. The camp grows more anarchic by the day, and he doesn’t know how to interpret chaos without Hawkeye. Some days he wakes up and wonders if he isn’t the one who’s lost his mind, adrift at the hospital without Hawk, or else ambling downward through the circles of Hell without Virgil. He almost thinks he’d prefer it if Hawkeye had gotten himself properly injured in some way; at least then he’d presumably know how to cure it, or at least how to tell if he was making progress.

BJ thinks if it were Hawkeye who got his orders, Hawkeye who had five minutes to leave a note for the most important person in his life right now, he wouldn’t give a shit about the risk. Hawkeye who, despite all his comedic maneuvering, his insecurity and his incessant deflection has the uncanny ability to hit you right where it hurts. Hawkeye would probably be spending his last five minutes putting down precisely how he feels; in fact, he’d probably be having the opposite problem to BJ, trying to be sincere and finding his feelings simply too strong for words. Hawkeye might smother the paper in kisses and tell BJ that, or at the very least manage to write down how hard it is to say everything that he wants to. All things BJ can’t do because that isn’t who he is. BJ is going home to his wife, who is supposed to be the most important person to him, and he doesn’t want to lie anymore, but he doesn’t know how not to either. So he leaves. Because all this love is ruining him.

Hawkeye would tell him that love could never mess anything up. That’s how he becomes okay with it. He becomes okay with it over a bourbon and water in the Transient Officers’ Club on Guam, when it tastes just like his first day. When he can still see Hawkeye’s face, smiling at him over Radar’s anxious form, and can still hear him telling him, “Welcome to Korea.”

 _I’m in love with Hawkeye_. He repeats it in his head like a mantra. It makes him sick to know that he left and it makes him lightheaded to know he’s going back. He knew before he left that he’d be going back, which doesn’t make it any better. He knows Hawkeye might hate him when he sees him again. He also knows he’ll still love him.

 _I’m in love with Hawkeye_. And not just attracted to, not just using him to cope somehow with the war. He’s genuinely, head over heels, the real thing in love. He thinks maybe he’s been stupid not to be able to name it before, but then again, it seemed impossible. He wonders how many times Hawkeye’s been told he’s impossible. He wonder how many times he’s said it himself.

_I’m in love with Hawkeye. Always was._

And so BJ’s plane is grounded and so his orders are rescinded and so he gets sent back to camp and so and so and so. And so this is a very old story, the only one there is, but it could never end now. BJ won’t let it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure when they mention this, but according to the wiki, Margaret was born at Fort Ord which is in Monterey. 
> 
> Up next: BJ —> east coast :)
> 
> i'm @crickelwood on tumblr if you want to say hi!


	5. time out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bj goes to maine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if I’m having a Kerouac moment like this I just try to ride it, so hopefully enjoy the second update in as many days :-)

Later, call it a month, six months, a year, BJ rents a car in Portland. Maine, not Oregon. He drives to Crabapple Cove and knocks on the door in the middle of the day to level his chances that it’s Hawkeye who answers. It’s Hawkeye who answers.

He’s in a sweater, a warm knit number in earthy autumnal hues, and worn brown corduroy slacks that look to be a size too big. So this is what Hawkeye used to look like. BJ can imagine the outfit completed by a white coat, or a scrub top just revealing the blue t-shirt he can see peeking out from under the hem of his sweater. He’s wearing a watch, something BJ can’t recall him ever doing in the years he’s known him, and he looks tired but not exhausted. All things considered, it’s better than he was expecting.

He’s standing in the doorway looking confused. Like he doesn’t quite believe BJ is real, which is fair enough since he doesn’t quite believe Hawkeye is real. He has his address, he’s had it the whole time, but he almost believed that there was no Hawkeye outside of Korea, like he was sent there specifically to keep him sane and then evaporate the second they got sent home. No. Hawkeye is beautifully, solidly, impossibly real.

“Hi,” BJ starts the bidding.

“Hi.” And Hawkeye’s voice is Hawkeye’s voice. It just begs to be heard in person.

“I just– I though there might be something we wanted to say to each other.”

“You came to Maine because you thought there might be something we wanted to say to each other?”

“Besides goodbye. And because I promised.”

“Promised?”

“Promised I’d see you again.”

No sign of recognition passes over Hawkeye’s face. “Oh,” he says anyway. His fingers trace the door frame as he leans slightly to one side, pausing when they reach an amber colored box around three inches long, stuck to the door at a jaunty forty-five degree angle.

“Listen–”

“I didn’t dump you, by the way,” BJ interjects.

“What?”

“When you said you’re always the one who gets dumped. But I didn’t dump you.”

“Beej–”

“I know it looks like I left you, but I came back. See?”

“I know you didn’t dump me. You didn’t dump me because we weren’t together.”

“Yes we were. We were and you know it.”

Hawkeye’s shoulders crumple slightly. BJ can’t believe he’s already ruining things. This is not going how he planned.

“You left me, Beej. You did.”

“But I came back, I came back!”

“Fine, you came back, but what are you doing here?”

They’re still standing on Hawkeye’s threshold, the straps of BJ’s sagging backpack digging into his shoulders.

“I– I’m holding you and I’m never letting you go. I’m kissing you, definitely kissing you, if you’ll let me. I… I’m loving you. All the time. Because I always was.”

“Beej–”

“And I’m taking you to New York. So you can take me. I rented a car.”

“Oh.”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Hawkeye says, but when he moves, it isn’t to let BJ in. He takes one step closer to him and looks at him with eyes that he’s seen a thousand times before and never quite understood what they were saying before. People think Hawkeye is impulsive. BJ thinks he’s never met anyone with more self-control.

“Hawkeye–”

“Where are you, BJ?” Hawkeye pleads. “Where is your life right now? Where’s your head?”

BJ swallows. “Here. So here I don’t know what to do with myself.” He waits another beat. “Peg knows I’m here. She knows I– she knows I’m–”

“But what do you know?”

 _I’m in love with you_. BJ knows it. For God’s sake, Hawkeye knows it. He must know it since he just told him. So why would Hawkeye make him say it if he felt the same way? All of a sudden BJ’s world comes crashing down, as he realizes his missed his chance. Hawkeye was in love with him when he needed him and now that he’s home he doesn’t need him, and BJ is starting to understand how Hawkeye felt all that time, like he swallowed a bowling ball and his stomach has dropped through the floor.

But Hawkeye is still there, still waiting for him to say something. He can’t speak, so he closes the already impossibly small gap between them, and hugs Hawkeye like he’s trying to absorb him into himself. When Hawkeye grasps him in return it’s like being brought back to life, and he doesn’t want to live another second without this person’s arms around him. He never knew someone’s embrace could feel this important.

He feels Hawkeye’s hand on the back of his head where it always is when he hugs you and he thinks you’re about to walk away. BJ does the same if only to bring locks of his hair to him, to breath in so he never forgets what he smells like. He leans in and kisses Hawkeye on the cheek so fervently it’s practically his neck and–

“Hawkeye?” A voice comes from behind Hawk and BJ sees a figure in gray at the bottom of the stairs.

“Dad!” Hawkeye pulls away suddenly but doesn’t let go of where he’s still gripping the fabric of BJ’s shirt at his shoulder.

The first thing BJ ever sees Daniel Pierce do is raise one eyebrow at him. “Who’s this? Trapper John?”

BJ blanches. Daniel goes casually to the kitchen.

“Put your bag down, BJ. Can I fix you some coffee?”

BJ spends one night in Crabapple Cove. His things are all set down in the office, a sheet spread over the sofa in there, but he goes into Hawkeye’s room where he’s lying in bed with a book, looking at it but not reading. BJ sits on the opposite end and stretches his legs out. They come up to Hawkeye’s elbows in the bed obviously made for a teenager.

“So,” BJ says.

“So.”

“So, your dad… knows?”

“Quite possibly,” Hawkeye says, shutting his book. “He knows a lot of things. He’s a doctor, after all.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Except I don’t, though.” Hawkeye fixes him an exasperated stare. Then, “Does he know I kiss boys?” He sounds condescending, superior.

“I just meant–”

“Does he know I did it with Trapper? Does he know how I wanted to– yeah. Yeah, he knows.”

BJ wants desperately to know what the third thing on that list was. _Say you love him. Say you love him. Say it. Say it._

“I don’t mind,” BJ says.

“I know you don’t mind. You said you were here to kiss me.”

“Oh, yeah. I was wondering if you heard that.”

“Of course I heard it.” 

They sit in silence. All BJ hears is Hawkeye’s watch ticking on his bedside table, and it’s the first uncomfortable silence he can remember sharing with him. He inches his fingers toward Hawkeye’s on the bed and traces them, and he can feel Hawkeye’s palms sweating. He’s not looking at BJ. He’s not looking at anything.

BJ doesn’t understand what the hell is wrong with him. He’s giving him everything he wanted, he’s telling him yes, you have carte blanche to BJ Hunnicutt and he’s just sitting there looking like BJ told him his dog died.

“Are you mad at me?” BJ says.

“Am I… mad at you?”

“Yeah. It’s just, you’re–“

“BJ, every night I dream there’s a knock at the door and when I answer it, it’s you. Every night for two years I dreamt you swept me off my feet and whisked me away into the dark and we ran away somewhere where they’d never heard of the Korean Peninsula. I worked so, so hard not to ruin things for you, but obviously I did it anyway. And I haven’t seen you in who knows how long, since we both got sent home from what can only be described as the worst case scenario for how either of our lives was about to turn out, so I mean I’m so fucking confused that I don’t know which way is up, but no, I’m not mad at you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” BJ is surprised by how raw his voice sounds, but he’s discovered he’s just barely holding back tears.

“I said things every day! But it wasn’t what you wanted, and it isn’t what you want, so–”

“It’s what I want.” _It’s what I want so bad I can barely say it out loud_.

“How do you know?”

“I’ll find out.”

When BJ turns up in Maine, because there’s no version of this story where BJ doesn’t eventually turn up in Maine, he makes Hawkeye take him to New York. He’s going to ask him to take him on the day– the date– that they planned at Battalion Aid. BJ think he’ll have a clear head at the top of the Wonder Wheel, and he figures once they’re living one fantasy they can live them all.

“So,” BJ says, once they’re on the highway. It’s not much beyond a straight shoot at that point.

“So.”

“How’ve you been?” BJ asks too cheerily, but he doesn’t know how to be any other way.

“How’ve I… been? Just swell, BJ, just swell. The sight of the color green makes me sick and the guilt and the goddamn tragedy eat me alive every day, but I work in a clinic three nights a week, so basically I’m swell. Just swell.”

“You didn’t answer my letters. Not really.”

“Yeah, well.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Why? Because I’m so fragile? Because I went crazy? Because everybody I went to high school with knows I came back from Korea without all my cookies? That’s just fucking touching, BJ, really.”

“You didn’t used to be this angry,” BJ says evenly. That really steams him.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“We used to tell each other everything,” BJ says. “We never used to fight.”

“We never told each other anything. We fought all the time.”

“We used to share everything,” BJ says instead. “You used to be funnier.”

“You show me something worth laughing about, I’ll make a joke. It’s like I used to think joking about it would save everyone.”

Hawkeye shakes his head to himself, then stares unfocused out the front window and drums his fingers on the passenger side door. He hasn’t unclenched his jaw since they got in the car. BJ has to do something to break the tension. For the first time in his life, he experiments with some spontaneity, and says the first truthful thing that comes into his head.

“You know I haven’t had sex with Peg since we went home?”

Hawkeye’s fingers freeze and he looks like he’s trying to stop his eyebrows from shooting up into his hairline.

“Uh-huh,” he says. “Me neither.”

“We’re not really a married couple anymore. We’re just a couple of people.”

“Well, what’s a married couple besides a couple of people?”

“She thinks I changed. It’s all my worst fears confirmed.”

Hawkeye pauses. BJ can feel him looking at him but refuses to take his eyes off the road. How much more obvious could he make it?

“There you go,” Hawkeye says. “You went home a stranger and I lost my mind. Guess we all got what was coming to us.”

Hours pass. They make idle chat and the banter flows just about as easily as it used to, since there was never a time when it wasn’t covering something else up. Eventually they’re idling in traffic on the West Side Highway. 

“I used to imagine days like this for us all the time,” Hawkeye says.

 _I bet you did_. 

“What do you mean?”

“Road trips,” he says. “You driving us from New England into the city for some show, or to see some friends. Whenever we got sent off someplace together sometimes I’d close my eyes and pretend that’s all we were doing. I guess… thanks for letting me have that.”

BJ doesn’t know why he doesn’t say he used to do the same thing. Maybe he still doesn’t want to admit he was imagining a life with Hawkeye while still relying on his life with Peg for his sanity. Or something like that.

“Anytime.”

Hawkeye sighs. He’s fishing for something, something specific from BJ, and if he knew what it was he would give it to him. He wouldn’t even have to ask. Except after all this time BJ is finally ready to admit that he can’t read Hawkeye’s mind.

“I didn’t want it to go like this, you know,” BJ says.

“What?”

“This. All of this. Our tearful reunion? I figured we run into each other’s arms in slow motion and everything.”

“Kiss under the fountain in Lincoln Center?”

“Or similar.”

“Is that what you wanted when I got back from the hospital? Because you could have had that, if you were there.”

“Yeah,” BJ says, clenching the steering wheel to keep his arms from shaking. “I know.” 

Suddenly Hawkeye’s body relaxes against his seat and he lets out a groan. “Ugh! It used to be easy!”

“What?” BJ says, startled into laughter from the sight of him.

“You! Me! This! Us!” Hawkeye’s laughing, too, now.

“We kind of had a good thing going, huh.”

“We had terrible timing.”

“It’s why I never joined marching band.”

“Pull off here,” Hawkeye says, pointing him toward an exit. Now they’re stalled in midtown, but at least it’s different traffic.

“So,” BJ says.

“So… buttons.”

“So how do we get to the museum?”

“The museum?”

“The Natural History Museum?”

“You want me to take you to take me to the Natural History Museum?”

“I thought that much was obvious.”

Hawkeye fixes him a stare that tells him _no_ , it decidedly was not.

“Parking can be a nightmare uptown,” Hawkeye says.

“What do you know about it?”

“I had a car when I was an undergrad. Sold it to help pay for med school.”

“Every day, Hawkeye.”

“What?”

“I learn something new.”

BJ parks in a cheap garage near Madison Square and Hawkeye takes him uptown on the subway. He looks marvelously cosmopolitan in his cardigan and dark jeans. 

“So,” Hawkeye says while they wait in line for their tickets at the museum.

“So.”

“Is this a date?”

“Every day is a date. Today’s the 18th, I believe.”

“I’m serious, BJ.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

Hawkeye grips his bicep and speaks in low tones. “Why are you stringing me along like this? Why are you always stringing me along?”

“Who’s stringing you along? This is the real thing, sweetheart.”

Hawkeye still doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t know the last time he said something that Hawkeye believed. That’s why he won’t tell him he loves him; he simply won’t believe it. And that, BJ will not be able to handle.

Because Hawkeye is twelve years old, he is sufficiently placated for a time by going to see the dinosaur exhibit. It’s about as beautiful as BJ imagined, watching Hawkeye be awed by all that history. He guides BJ’s hand over the display fossils and explains to him the similarities between dinosaur and human skeletal structures, as if he can’t see for himself.

“I can’t wait to take Erin here one day,” BJ says. Hawkeye pauses in front of a plaque about stegosauruses.

“I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“Me, too.”

They finish the exhibit in relative quiet. BJ even asks Hawkeye questions, anything to see the light in his eyes when he talks about something he loves, but some switch in his head has been flicked and he’s gone eerily calm. They woke up early and both drove for three hours in the morning, so as they’re making their way out Hawkeye apologetically suggests they skip the Met.

“I love it so much there, I don’t want to waste it on a day that I’m dead on my feet,” he says, fidgeting with the cuff of BJ’s jacket.

“I meant with you, you know,” BJ says. Hawkeye puts his hands down.

“What?”

“I can’t wait to take Erin here one day with you.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye says. “Right.”

_Why don’t you know how to be loved?_

“Take me to Coney Island?”

Hawkeye buys them each a hot dog and a funnel cake on the boardwalk. His hand hovers over the grape NeHi in the cooler but he grabs two Coca Colas instead, and they sit on a bench outside and face the water.

“I didn’t think it would be this empty,” BJ says. It’s chilly, yes, but there’s hardly any foot traffic at all. He thought New York was supposed to be crowded. Fast. Angry. Things that make him unsurprised Hawkeye lived there when he was younger.

“It’s still basically winter,” Hawkeye explains. “This must be the first week it’s open. The shops, I mean. The boardwalk’s always open. I used to come here when– whenever I– it’s funny…”

“What?”

“I used to come here after a breakup. Because when I was a kid, or a teenager or whatever, the first time I really got my heart broken–”

“Julie,” BJ supplies.

“Ju– how did you know that?”

“You told us. Over truth or dare.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Was that not true?”

“No, it was. That’s what surprised me more.”

“Jesus Christ, Hawk.” BJ smiles and leans into Hawkeye’s shoulder. The familiarity of the motion washes over him like a crashing wave.

“Anyway, after that, Dad told me the only place to go when you’re grieving something is the ocean. Whether it’s a person or a relationship or I don’t know, you got fired from your job or whatever. So he took me to the pier and he bought me a cotton candy and we walked, even though they were closing up shop for the autumn.”

“That’s nice.” BJ has absolutely no concept of how his own father would help him through a breakup.

“It is. And so when I was in school and I had my first bad breakup right in the middle of my sophomore fall, the only thing I could think to do was take a walk by the pier. I used to do it kind of a lot,” Hawkeye says. He leans his head on BJ’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “The only heart in New York with a revolving door,” he mumbles.

“Do you think that’s what this is?” BJ says softly. “You think I’m breaking up with you?”

“I don’t know what I think. I love spending time with you and I don’t have a good grip on reality. You should know that by now.”

“Come on, Hawk. Still one more thing you promised me.”

“So,” Hawkeye says. They’re in a compartment alone on the Wonder Wheel. The real Wonder Wheel in real Brooklyn in real New York and real Hawkeye Pierce is sitting next to him, not across. _This is not a fantasy_ , BJ tells himself. _You have to make it real_.

“So.”

“What are we doing up here, really?”

“I wanted to do it right.”

“Do what?”

BJ watches Hawkeye swallow like he definitely knows what he’s going to say next.

“A lot of things,” he says. “Kiss you, for openers.” But he still doesn’t lean in. He’s still waiting for Hawkeye to make the first move, who is obviously waiting for BJ to make the first move, even though neither of them could be more obvious about where they want this night to go if they tried.

“Since when have you wanted that, really wanted that?” Hawkeye asks. Their carriage rattles and they rise six feet.

“Since always. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, since always.” BJ shifts closer to Hawkeye but he stops him with a hand on his chest.

“You say the same things when you’re lying and when you’re telling the truth! I don’t know when which is which or when I can believe you or–”

“Hawkeye, I kissed you!”

“You were going insane! You wanted Peg and I was the closest thing. I was throwing myself at your feet like an idiot all the time and you never even noticed, and now all of a sudden you’re–”

“I noticed,” BJ says. “I noticed.”

“No.”

“I was trying not to– I didn’t think I’d ever be able to give you anything like that. I thought I was going back to my life. I _needed_ to think I was going back to my life, can’t you understand that? I didn’t want to lead you on so I acted like I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want… to lead me on?”

“Of course not.”

“But that’s all you did. You flirted with me constantly.”

“Hawkeye, talking and flirting are practically interchangeable for you! If I wasn’t going to flirt we never could have talked!”

Hawkeye puts his head in his hands and BJ sees him take a deep breath. He comes up smiling, and shrugging.

“It was always you,” Hawkeye says.

“It was always _you_ ,” BJ agrees. “Even when I didn’t know it, it was always you.”

“I would have kissed you on day one. As soon as you said–”

“Rudyard Kipling–”

Hawkeye is kissing him barely before he’s gotten the name out, and it tastes just like the last day he was happy. Hawkeye was the last person who met him when he was still him and the only one who loved him throughout. Talk about too much Hawkeye running through your mind. Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye. Their carriage rattles and clangs and rises and rises and rises until they’re at the top of the Wonder Wheel and BJ is oblivious to the view around them because his entire being is Hawkeye’s lips against his, his tongue against his teeth, the muffled sounds of his laughter in his mouth.

“You’re impossible,” BJ says through a grin as they start their descent. “You’re impossible, and I love it. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

Hawkeye goes bright red, another thing BJ has never, ever seen him do before.

“Hawkeye, you’re blushing!”

“You’re in love with me? I’m in love with you!”

“Fancy that,” BJ says, and kisses him again as they’re stalled in the air.

Sometimes, BJ thinks he has Hawkeye all figured out. He’s a good person, so he hated the war. He hates War with a capital-W and Suffering and Pain and he loves Laughter and Light and Love. He is also confusing, and complicated, insecure and evasive, bitter, angry, sarcastic, rude, self-righteous, egotistical, and weird. But what’s even more confusing is that the reasons you love him are the same reasons you hate him. He's loud, constantly joking, and seemingly unable to be serious for more than thirty seconds at a time. He’s sensitive, sentimental, and nostalgic, and romanticizes certain things so much that you wonder if you’re experiencing the same reality as he is. He thinks he can save the world. He thinks he has to.

BJ drives them back to Maine that same day, perhaps against his better judgment, for six hours in the dark up 84 and I-95. And even as Hawkeye lies sleeping, draped over the whole backseat, all BJ is thinking is that he could spend the rest of his life like this. He used to think he would follow Hawkeye anywhere. He still would, probably. But he thinks it might be up to him to lead the way, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those curious, the amber box on hawkeye’s door is a mezuzah, a jewish talisman of sorts that’s placed in front doorways. The further easter egg is that they contain a prayer called the “sh’ma” which means “hear” or “listen,” which is why “listen” is hawkeye’s next word. Basically hawk uses too much yiddish for his mom not to have been jewish, sorry, I don’t make the rules. L’chaim. 
> 
> up next, truly married life <3 + more Margaret


	6. future, part i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I keep saying it’s gonna be the end and it keeps getting dragged out!! Idk if I’m sorry tho I’m having a good time and I hope you are too

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” BJ is rudely awakened as Hawkeye shakes him by the shoulders. He pulls their fluffy duvet over his head.

“Five more minutes,” he whines.

“Nope!” Hawkeye rips the covers away. “It’s Margaret Day!”

BJ stops trying to grab the pillow from behind him to shove over his face. That’s right, it is Margaret Day.

“Ah,” BJ says. “What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Eight? She doesn’t get in until eleven!”

“Right!” Hawkeye gets up and starts pacing around the room picking up rogue articles of clothing and tossing them on the bed. A paisley tie lands over BJ’s shoulder. “And we have to go get the bagels from Murray, the flowers from Steph, the apple turnover stuff, _and_ drop everything off back here before we go meet her. Come on, come on, there’s already coffee in the kitchen.”

“Hawkeye. My darling. My precious flower,” BJ says flatly, “surely you don’t need me for that.”

“Yes, I do,” Hawkeye says, tossing him a pair of jeans. “You’re my chauffeur. And don’t call me Shirley.”

BJ grabs a t-shirt as well and follows Hawkeye through the house.

“Did you shower already?”

“I’ve been up since six. There’s extra pancake batter in the fridge if you don’t want to wait for brunch to eat.”

“Hm,” BJ says. “Just coffee’s fine.”

It transpires that Hawkeye is a morning person. BJ leans over the coffeepot to kiss him while he pours him a mug.

“Easy, buster, not till you brush your teeth.”

“I can’t brush my teeth and then have coffee.”

“Guess you’ll just have to wait,” Hawkeye says what can only be described as coquettishly, and sets the coffee back down.

“Tease.”

“Lech.”

“You wound me, you really do.”

“My office opens at three, I’ll stitch you up.”

Hawkeye sips what must be at least his second cup of coffee of the morning, if not his third.

“You good, Hawk?”

“Never better.” BJ stares at him. “No, seriously, I’m good. I just want everything to go perfectly.”

“Everything will.”

BJ gets up and moves to stand next to Hawkeye at the counter. He puts an arm around him and plants a kiss on his temple. Hawkeye leans up and kisses him properly in return despite his tooth-brushing rule. BJ can feel him relaxing into his side.

“Now drink your coffee and get in the shower. I wanna be in the car in thirty minutes.”

Margaret Day comes every so often, and all it means is that Margaret is visiting. Except whenever she does, Hawkeye gets it into his pretty little head that he has to be the perfect host in charge of the most perfect forty-eight hours of all their lives or else the friendship is over.

“You realize this is the first Margaret Day of the 1960’s?” Hawkeye says as BJ drives them into town. “That’s highly significant.”

“It’s the first everything of the 1960’s,” BJ says. “It’s 1960.”

Ten years since the war started. Nine since Erin was born. Lifetimes and lifetimes.

They’re arriving in what is generously referred to as downtown. Every day Hawkeye makes fun of BJ for the state of Sacramento, California. He tells him it looks like a town out of a western movie, like he expects to bump into prospectors on his way into the five-and-dime and get told this town ain’t big enough for the both of them. BJ knows Hawkeye secretly loves it, even if he half can’t believe it didn’t exist until the 19th century.

Everyone they shop from is in love with Hawkeye. Not _in love_ , BJ has to remind himself when Hawkeye’s casual conversations with them veer into the flirtatious, but they do enjoy his company, though for that he can hardly blame them. BJ keeps a careful catalog of everyone in town who actually knows they’re a couple and everyone who thinks they’re just Sacramento’s two most eligible bachelors, which he knows Hawkeye knows, and which he knows Hawkeye must not care about since he acts exactly the same regardless of who they’re talking to.

They pick up bagels which Hawkeye insists are little more than bread rolls from Murray behind the deli counter, who doesn’t know, then flowers from Steph, the florist who lives above her shop alone with her twin sons since her husband got killed in Korea, who knows, then the ingredients for pastry dough from Estelle, the octogenarian wife of the baker, who doesn’t know, then a veritable bushel of apples from Jonathan at the wholesale produce market, who knows.

“We’ve been doing this thing for the better part of six years and you still flirt with every single person you meet,” BJ says after they load up the car and start heading back. “Is there something you wanna tell me?”

“Yes. Estelle and I are eloping in Vegas this weekend and we’d like you to be the witness.”

BJ can’t help but crack a smile. “You know Jonathan definitely has a crush on you.”

“A crush? No one’s had a _crush_ on me since I was sixteen.”

“Fine. He’s infatuated with you. And he thinks you’re attainable.”

“Uh-huh. Do you think I’m attainable?”

“I– no. No, Hawk, of course not.”

Hawkeye rolls his eyes. He used to hate when BJ got jealous over figments of his imagination flirting with Peg and now he hates when he gets jealous over various and sundry mongers flirting with Hawkeye. In a way, BJ hates it, too, but he doesn’t know how to stop.

“I know you think I’m insecure, but sometimes, Beej? I mean, it’s like you can’t see the life we built here. What do you think all this is anyway, something I’m just gonna walk away from? I don’t walk away, you know that.”

“I know that, I know that!” BJ says, releasing the steering wheel for a split second to hold his hands up in surrender. It’s a fight they have so often that it’s barely a fight and more of a way to kill time. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think it’s a good thing it’s Margaret Day.”

“Ha! Me, too.”

Margaret always hugs Hawkeye first when they meet her at the airport.

“Oh, Hawkeye, it’s so good to see you!” she says into his chest after they all but run into each other’s arms.

“Margaret, you smell amazing! What air freshener are they using on the plane?”

She throws her head back in laughter and playfully shoves him away.

“BJ, I’ve missed you,” she says as he embraces her one-armed, her bouquet of flowers in the other.

“You, too, Margaret, I’m so glad you came.” She gives him another little squeeze before they pulls apart. “Here, these are for you.”

“Oh, they’re gorgeous! You shouldn’t have!” She beams and holds them up to her nose.

“I don’t know, seems like we should have,” BJ says.

“Well, maybe you’re right,” she concedes. “Helen’s allergic, we can never have anything in the house.”

Margaret lives in Massachusetts with a roommate, another former army nurse she knew growing up, in some Berkshire town Hawkeye’s always having to remind him of the name of. It sounds nice, though. Lots of snow in the winter and sun in the summer. BJ knows Hawkeye wants to go back east one day, and they’ll cross that bridge when they get there.

“So, what’s the agenda?” Margaret says, hooking herself on Hawkeye’s arm while he leads them to the parking lot. “I slept on the plane so I’m up for anything.”

“Well,” Hawkeye says, “we’ve got a whole brunch spread set up at home, then they’ve just got a collection of Monets in at the Crocker which I’ve been hearing about for months, then Peg’s bringing Erin over for dinner and I’ve got the fixings for my world famous apple turnovers. Then it’s canasta by the fire and slow dancing to Bing as far as I’m concerned.”

“Sounds wonderful!” Margaret says.

“World famous?” BJ says.

“Well, they’re the toast of Crabapple Cove,” Hawkeye backpedals.

“I see.”

“Or they were the last time I made them some twenty years ago.”

“Sounds about right.”

“You two haven’t changed a bit,” Margaret says as BJ opens the car door for her. She slips into the back seat and places her bag next to her.

“Oh, no?” Hawkeye says as BJ gets the passenger side door for him.

“Nope,” Margaret says, still smiling uncontrollably. “Every time I see you I wonder if I’ve been imagining it, the way you move like two halves of a whole or something, but I’m not. And you’ve been like that since day one, I mean, it’s really quite miraculous.”

Hawkeye and BJ exchange a glance in the front seat.

“It’s nothing,” Hawkeye says.

“Piece of cake,” BJ agrees.

“No, apple turnovers.”

Margaret laughs again. Being with them can make her so giddy.

Hawkeye whips up a batch of scrambled eggs back home and they eat them with cheese and bacon on the bagels how he instructs them and assures them it’s how they do it in New York.

“You still owe me a baconeggandcheese and a trip to the Met from Coney Island, you know,” BJ tells Hawkeye as he pours another round of coffees then takes his customary seat next to him. Margaret sits across. Hawkeye sits how he always does, with one foot up on the chair with him and his knee leaning against the table.

“Thanks,” Hawkeye says. “Fly me to New York and I’ll take you to the Met. No charge.”

“It’s pay by donation.”

“Like I said.”

“So,” Margaret interjects, “how’s Erin?”

“She’s perfect,” BJ says, grinning, and grinning even wider when he sees how Hawkeye can’t help from smiling when he talks about her. “I swear she’s almost as tall as Peg.”

“She is not,” Hawkeye says.

“She helps me with the crossword puzzle. Sometimes she even knows ones I don’t.”

“And she’s wicked funny. Wonder where she gets that from,” Hawkeye adds, waggling his eyebrows.

Margaret ignores him. “And Peg?”

“She’s good, she’s good,” BJ says. “She’s trying to sell a couple properties closer to town right now but I understand she has some good leads. I don’t understand too much about it, to be honest, but you can ask her yourself at dinner.”

“That’s BJ’s way of saying that since he’s not married to Peg anymore he doesn’t have to put any effort into understanding what she does for work,” Hawkeye says.

“Hey!”

“I guess that makes you lucky you’re both doctors,” Margaret says.

“Who’s a doctor?” Hawkeye says, “I ran away and joined the circus.”

Margaret sighs contentedly over her clean plate.

“You’re pretty lucky, you know,” she says. “I always wanted what you two have, being best friends like this.”

They refrain from sharing a look since there’s no way Margaret won’t notice, and BJ can sense Hawkeye stifling his laugh.

“Right,” BJ says as evenly as he can. “Best friends.”

“Oh, relax,” Margaret says in a tone that’s much more familiar to him than when she’s cheerful. “I know there’s more to it than that. But look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t best friends, huh?”

“You better do it, Beej, you’re a better liar than I am.”

BJ stands up to start clearing the table. He looks straight at Margaret.

“Who is this man? I’ve never seen him before in my life.” And the sound of the two of them laughing is better than any song that could play on the radio.

Hawkeye and Margaret gossip and giggle like a gaggle of girls all through the museum. They’re drawn to all the same paintings, ones that BJ finds dull and lifeless or else too busy and confusing; she fiddles with the pins on his jacket ( _Veterans for Peace_ , _Doctors for Socialized Medicine_ , and _Queer Liberation NOW_ ); he even dares her to touch a sculpture, one with a particularly tantalizing texture, and she almost does it until the guard spots them at the last second and they dart into the next room without BJ.

Sometimes BJ aches at how Hawkeye and Margaret love each other. How they love each other without wanting each other. The closest thing he has to something like that is with Peg, but that’s too complicated, too colored by the years of deception mingled with devotion. Meanwhile there is the distinct possibility that Hawkeye and Margaret have never knowingly lied to each other.

But then they all three stop in front of a gigantic canvas. It’s an abstract painting, little more than a collection of blended colors, and it’s no mystery why they have to stand and look at it together. It’s the green that hits them first, hunter and olive, dark and unsaturated shades that are just barely naturally occurring. Then the red, of course, swelling up from the bottom, mingling with purples and oranges and specks of yellow, threatening to overtake the whole thing but not quite managing to drown out the green of the background underneath. Hawkeye and Margaret each grip one of BJ’s hands as they stare at the work, and he can feel their pulses racing in their wrists.

“Huh,” Hawkeye breathes. He’s the first to let go, and he steps forward to read the plaque besides. “It’s not supposed to be anything,” he reports back. “It’s the colors he saw in the New Mexico landscape. Apparently it’s supposed to be meditative.”

He stands back and BJ links his arm around his waist.

“It’s like a train wreck,” BJ says. “I can’t stop looking at it.”

“God, I’m glad we’re home,” Margaret whispers, quietly enough that BJ’s not sure Hawkeye hears. 

Hawkeye is subdued through the Monet exhibit and the car ride home, so BJ keeps an eye on him. It’s no secret that Hawkeye takes things, most things, everything, and not just things about the war, harder than most people. It’s faded, gotten less visceral and immediate as the years have gone on, but it’s still there, and it’s especially bad if he’s not expecting it. Like when Erin was young it was sometimes difficult, but he could prepare if he knew ahead of time that she was coming, and as she’s gotten older and he’s gotten to know her it’s not always so bad. And it’s not as thought Hawkeye is completely useless; he has plenty of coping mechanisms and not all of them are unhealthy. Currently he’s in the kitchen trying to distract himself by getting a head start on dessert.

“Hey, Beej, if you were a kitchen utensil, which would you be? I think I’d be a whisk since I’m such a big _whisk-taker_. Ha! Get it?” He’s talking a mile a minute the way he does when he’s like this. “So, what about you?”

“I don’t know,” BJ says. “Fire extinguisher.”

“Ah, the noble fire extinguisher. The only single-purpose item in any sane man’s kitchen. And this isn’t any sane man’s kitchen. Why do you suppose you say that?”

BJ goes and stands right in front of the cabinet Hawkeye needs to open.

“You’re in my way,” Hawkeye says.

“No kidding.”

Hawkeye huffs and looks up at him. BJ pulls him gently toward him by his waist.

“Baby,” BJ says. “Hawk. You’re okay. You’re home. We’re all home.”

Hawkeye kisses him, gently and desperately at the same time. He rests his head on his shoulder.

“I know,” he says. “It just makes me sick. All day, every day, I’m sick.”

“I know.” BJ rubs his back in deliberate warm circles. “How can I help?”

“Sous chef for me? And dee-jay. Yeah, let’s put on a record, I’m tired of the radio. So unpredictable.”

BJ goes to the living room where Margaret is already squatting by their record collection.

“Dee-jay BJ?” she says, looking pretty pleased with herself.

“Oh, very good,” he says. “I definitely haven’t heard that a million times before.”

“Tsk!”

“All right, we need something light, but not too light. Nothing jarringly upbeat but nothing particularly sad, either.”

Margaret leafs through the albums. “You’re so good with him. I’d never know what to say when he– or even if I did, he hates me too much for anything I say to stick.” She pulls out a Paul Anka record and raises her eyebrows to ask for approval.

“Nah, a little too whiny. Morose, you know. What do you mean he hates you?”

“For being Army,” she explains calmly. “It doesn’t bother me anymore. Really,” she adds when he doesn’t buy it. “And even if it did, you really think I could change his mind? How about this?” She holds out B. B. King’s _The Blues_.

“Probably not,” he agrees. “That’s perfect.” He snatches the record and sets it to go, then returns to help Hawkeye in the kitchen.

“Why do things happen to me, indeed,” Hawkeye says, but BJ knows he loves the album. He loves the blues in general, the way you so often get sad lyrics to a deceptively happy tune. Definitely doesn’t remind him of Hawkeye’s general demeanor at all.

Hawkeye bakes dessert while BJ struggles to read the recipe to him from his father’s letter, and eventually Peg and Erin arrive bearing dinner to be heated in the oven. Peg and Margaret hug like old friends and immediately start chatting while Erin runs to the kitchen and hugs BJ’s leg. 

“Hawk,” she says seriously, “you will not believe what book the seventh graders are doing their English project on.”

“Oh, no?”

“ _Last of the Mohicans!_ My friend Cheryl’s sister just started junior high so she told me.”

“ _Last of the Mohicans, Last of the Mohicans_ ,” Hawkeye repeats, stroking his chin in mock contemplation. “Nope, doesn’t sound familiar.”

Erin erupts in peals of laughter. “That’s where ‘Hawkeye’ is from!” she informs him. 

“Ohhhh!” he says. “I always wondered about that.”

“Silly. BJ, Mommy says to heat the macaroni up for ten minutes exactly or else the topping will burn.”

“You got it, chef,” BJ says. Erin has entered a phase where she thinks since she can call Hawkeye by his first name it’s okay for her to do it to BJ, too, and he doesn’t know how to explain to her that that’s not quite right.

Dinner passes in a whirlwind. Peg asks after Hawkeye’s father who still has to pinch himself every day when he remembers his son lives in California and Margaret asks after Peg’s friend Angie who lives above the restaurant she runs in San Fransisco but is thinking about moving to the suburbs and they all find out everything that Erin is learning in school including how to divide fractions and that James Buchanan was the only American president who never married.

While Hawkeye takes the opportunity to delight Erin with his backlog of obscure knowledge about Franklin Pierce, BJ is awed by how Hawkeye was obviously born to be a father. He curses the cruel universe for depriving him of that option in so many ways and secretly thanks it for letting him be another father to Erin, especially since she was denied even one as a baby.

Soon enough it’s nearing Erin’s bedtime and Peg has to be up for work tomorrow, so she takes her home. BJ feels jazzed, wired for some reason and suggests they go dancing. He and Peg have a perfectly amiable relationship, and she clearly has a huge soft spot for Hawkeye (and Margaret), but sometimes having the two of them in the room together involved in some kind of co-parenting adventure is too much for BJ to wrap his head around. He has to remind himself that non-traditional doesn’t mean bad, and that everything good that’s ever come into his life has been sideways. Still, he needs to get out of the house, and Hawkeye and Margaret love to dance. There’s a place not too far and he promises he’ll only have one drink so he can take them back anytime.

BJ nurses a vodka and tonic by the bar while Hawkeye and Margaret dance together. Sometimes he leads, sometimes she does, it’s always energetic and frenetic, never slow or remotely romantic, and they emotively and passionately sing along to every song they know the words to. Hawkeye looks over Margaret’s shoulder at him whenever he can and blows kisses and sings relevant lyrics his way, and BJ wishes harder than he’s wished almost anything in his life that he could go over there and be the one dancing with him.

Hawkeye’s movements are sometimes awkward and sometimes fluid but always fun, especially when he knows the song and can’t contain his impression of the singer. BJ pictures himself in Margaret’s place, Hawkeye’s hand in his, his other at his hip, dipping him for just long enough to make him blush, then bringing him up and spinning him glamorously. Except it’s not that kind of place and besides, he’s happy to dance with Margaret for the time being.

BJ’s humming the Tennessee Waltz under his breath by the time they’re leaving and he doesn’t work out why until he hears himself singing the lyrics while he makes up Margaret’s bed on the sofa.

“ _I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz when an old friend I happened to see. Introduced her to my loved one and while they were dancing, my friend stole my sweetheart from me_.”

Margaret catches him singing when she emerges from brushing her teeth.

“Don’t let Hawkeye see you in that t-shirt, okay?” he tells her. It’s an old Army one, soft and worn in classic olive drab, and so many sizes too big it practically hangs to her knees.

“Oh, shit,” she mutters. “I really wasn’t thinking when I packed it. Don’t worry, BJ, I’ll make sure to be changed in the morning.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

He goes to leave, giving Margaret’s shoulder a little squeeze on his way past. She sits on the couch and speaks up just before he’s out of earshot.

“You don’t actually think that, do you?” she says.

BJ turns around. “What?”

“That I’m going to steal him away.”

“What?” BJ laughs. “No, of course not. No, of course not,” he repeats when it’s clear she doesn’t believe him.

“Because I heard you singing that, Mr. Tennessee Waltz. Mr. My-Friend-Stole-My-Sweetheart-From-Me.”

“That’s Dr. My-Friend-Stole-My-Sweetheart-From-Me to you,” he says. “No. No, I don’t. I could never. I just–”

“Because you have _nothing_ to worry about,” she emphasizes. “And not just because I’ve never seen someone more in love with another person than he is with you, but because I’m happy just the way I am, you know. I’ll have you know I’m not looking for a man, BJ Hunnicutt.”

“I know, Margaret,” he says. “But, thank you.”

She smiles warmly at him and he turns to leave again.

“Hey, BJ?” she calls after him. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Margaret.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so: “don’t call me Shirley” is, naturally, from airplane! I would have loved to still have them living in SF maybe but I really don’t know enough about it to convincingly write it I don’t think. Meanwhile I’ve been to sacramento and there is no such place there (jkjk I have family there etc and I did have a moderately spiritual experience when I saw the Monet collection at the Crocker so. There they go). (In my mind Peg lives in Sacramento now as well since she also doesn’t want what mill valley stands for anymore, because I really don’t think BJ could deal with living like fifteen minutes away from erin at any time). The painting they look at is technically supposed to be Clay Spohn’s “Red, Green and Violet” which I saw at the Crocker some years ago but which wasn’t actually painted until 1961 (so it goes). Oh, and baconeggandcheese is definitely one word.
> 
> Up next: beejhawkmarg take the berkshires :)


	7. future, parts ii and iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. Full disclosure, this chapter was basically the first idea I had for this fic and then the rest of it was extremely elaborate set up, and I only got the idea from a bit of tom Allen standup I saw on mock the week where he talks about getting invited to bachelorette parties. You could say it spiraled from there. Anyway!

The wedding invitation is a surprise, to say the least.

“Margaret? Getting married?” Hawkeye asks incredulously from the kitchen. “To a man??”

“That’s what it says,” BJ calls back. He drops his bag down and brings the invite with him to the table. “We’re cordially invited to the wedding of Margaret Houlihan and Harold Hardcastle, August the 24th, nineteen-sixty-whatever.”

“I mean, I genuinely don’t believe you.” Hawkeye emerges and snatches the pale purple paper from BJ.

“Ooh, Stockbridge!” Hawkeye says, reading the location. “They have my favorite tchotchke store in the world, and the clam chowder at Alice’s is _mwah_. To die for.” 

“Give me that,” BJ grabs it back and pores over it. “I think we have plenty of tchotchkes.”

“Hey, you can get anything you want–”

“It says we’re also invited to the hen party. BJ Hunnicutt and guest.”

“It does not say that.”

“We should talk to her.”

“Generally speaking I definitely agree.”

“I mean, she’s just like me, you know,” BJ says as Hawkeye sits down next to him. “She tells herself she’s not affected by her surroundings, she relies on conventions like marriage to be her lifeline even though it’ll never work. I didn’t think she was still so in denial about it. I mean, last time we talked… anyway, you know. We’re not like you, it took us a long time to arrive at the truth. I really thought she… I don’t know.”

“That’s very self-aware of you, Beej,” Hawkeye says, sounding impressed.

“I’m an ongoing project.”

“But listen, if it’s what she wants–”

“It is not what she wants!” _Whoa, boy._ BJ collects himself. “It is not what she wants.”

“I just don’t know if it’s really any of our business! Shouldn’t we just go to congratulate her and be with our friend on her special–”

“Well, when did this happen, Hawk? When did I become the hothead and you become the sensible one, huh?”

“I thought you wanted me to be more rational.”

“It’s just– I’m really seeing myself in her right now, and it’s freaking me out.” Hawkeye leans in close and rubs his back.

“Okay, so we’ll talk to her,” he reassures him. “I love it when you get all hot and bothered.” Hawkeye kisses him on the cheek. “Righteous.” BJ turns his head so he can kiss him on the lips. “Sanctimonious and riled up.”

“Those are not good qualities,” BJ mumbles into his mouth.

“They are fun, though,” Hawkeye says, and he gets back up to return to the kitchen. “And if you think Margaret needs our help, then I’ll do whatever you think is right. You’re right that I don’t really relate to it. I never wanted to get married.”

“And just look at us now.”

BJ smirks and Hawkeye winks back at him. It’s hard to say what they are. It certainly feels like marriage, and BJ would know, but it’s a particular stabbing pain when if he should mention being married people then begin to ask after his wife. The first time it happened he went home and told Hawkeye, who naturally found the whole thing hilarious, but BJ didn’t spend the better part of twenty years getting okay with having a husband just to have to lie about it for the rest of his life.

Hawkeye’s had a lifetime of knowing what to expect, of having a future he was at least able to predict. BJ doesn’t think it was easy for Hawkeye, lord knows it was hard, but he still sometimes has to remind himself not to envy his self-assuredness, that their being in different places about the whole homosexuality thing or what have you doesn’t have any bearing on the fact that they’re in love and spending their lives together. Hawkeye is smart, and he knew what he was getting into, the fruitcake.

And so BJ and the fruitcake find themselves renting a car in Hartford, Connecticut and driving the hour and a half to the Red Lion where Margaret has generously agreed to put them up, since most everybody else they’d invited is essentially local. They spend one night near the airport to rest up and head over to be there in time for the hen party.

“It’s only an hour from here to Northampton,” Hawkeye explains as he fiddles with the radio dial. “And simply the best local radio stations in America are along Route 7.”

“Yes, dear,” BJ says as Hawkeye settles on a mellow Beatles track.

“ _One day you’ll look to see I’ve gone, but tomorrow may rain so I’ll follow the sun_ ,” Hawkeye sings along, because he’s incurable.

“When we get there, I’ll handle talking to Margaret, okay?” BJ says. “You meet as many of her friends as possible and find out what the hell is going on.”

“Yes, dear,” Hawkeye says, smiling one of BJ’s favorite smiles, the one for when they’re about to expertly pull off an elaborate scheme. Hawkeye loves it even more when it’s one of BJ’s devising. By the time they arrive at the party after being stalled in traffic in downtown metropolitan Chicopee, things are already in full swing.

“All right, I’ll go schmooze,” Hawkeye says once they’re through the door.

“Reconnaissance, Hawk! You’re gathering reconnaissance.”

“That’s what I said, schmoozing.” And he’s off before BJ even has time to roll his eyes.

BJ tries to use his height to peer over the crowd and locate Margaret, but he just ends up making eye contact with a dapper looking fellow in a vest and a tie who makes BJ feel underdressed even though he is wearing a blazer which is more than can be said for Hawkeye. Most of the time BJ tries not to presume, but he’s also not stupid. He can tell when he’s being given the eye, even if he pretends not to in an effort to ward off potential flirters. Dapper Dan makes his way over to BJ and offers a handshake.

“Howdy, stranger,” he says, “new in town?”

“Oh, sort of,” BJ says, returning the handshake noncommittally.

“Friend of Margaret’s?” Dapper Dan asks not _not_ suggestively. BJ laughs.

“Actually, yes. In fact, I’m trying to find her right now.”

“Think she could wait five more minutes? Let me buy you a drink,” he says. Mostly BJ wants to know how exactly he clocked him so quickly, then remembers he’s one of three men at a bachelorette party and doesn’t begrudge him his boldness. It’s not as if it’s not something Hawkeye would’ve tried.

“Sorry,” BJ says, then thinks he sees Margaret, “I’m married!” he calls behind him as he runs away, probably leaving Dapper Dan awfully confused indeed.

On his way he’s stopped by another unlucky prospect, a short auburn haired woman who’s even more clueless than BJ.

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” she says. “Do you work at the hospital with Margaret?”

“Hm?” BJ says. “Oh, no. We’re old friends. She was my figure skating coach when I was training for the Olympics.”

“What?”

Then he spots Margaret wearing an impressive pair of bright orange trousers and an off-white peasant blouse, and he realizes he’d been mistakenly searching for someone in a wedding dress.

“Thank God,” BJ mutters. “Sorry, gotta run. My chariot awaits,” he tells Clueless before dashing away to catch Margaret before she disappears again.

“BJ!” she exclaims when she sees him and immediately pulls him into a tight hug. “You made it! Oh, I’m so glad to see you. Where’s Hawkeye?”

“He’s, uh… he’s schmoozing. He’s looking for you. We both were. I found you first,” BJ explains. He used to be so much better at making up excuses through his teeth. Something about the constantly lying to himself, yadda yadda yadda.

“Well, let’s go find him! That fink owes me more martinis than I can count.”

BJ takes one of her shoulders. He thinks she might be a couple drinks in but he can't properly tell. He plans to order a beer at least before getting too severe because some things, naturally, never change.

“He hasn’t had a martini in fifteen years. Margaret, can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure, BJ. What’s up?”

He guides her to the bar and orders a drink. She gets a club soda and seems to realize he’s a tiny bit serious.

“It was too bad about the rain today,” he says. _Christ_ , he internally curses himself. He still deflects even when he started it. “But I hear it’s supposed to be sunny all day tomorrow.”

“Well, you know what they say. If you don’t like the weather in the Berkshires, wait five minutes.”

BJ chuckles. “That’s pretty good, I’ll have to try that on Hawk later. Though I’m sure he’s heard it before.”

“Yes, I’m sure he’s heard it all. BJ, what’s going on? I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes,” he says. “Right. Listen, Margaret, I know how you feel. I mean, I’ve gone down this road and I know how difficult it can be to–”

“BJ,” she places a hand on his forearm and stops him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I just– it’s important to me what happens to you, Margaret! It’s important to me that you’re happy. So I– we, actually, just wanted to make sure that this is, you know, what you really want. Out of life.”

She still looks completely confused. BJ can’t believe how wrong he was about her. He thought after years of seeing how happy he and Hawkeye were she would never be wooed by convention again. Still, that cultural brainwashing is powerful shit, especially for an Army Brat, and he doesn’t begrudge her her foray into tradition. In fact, he relates to her more than almost anyone else currently in his life. He still has to pinch himself sharply and regularly to remember that he’s not about to wake up in a house with a wife and a white picket fence.

“BJ, I’m so sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you mean.”

“I thought you knew this life wasn’t for you! You don’t have to change yourself for a man just because it’s what everyone expects! Getting married won’t help you, Margaret, I should know.”

Her brow furrows. “You think… you think this is a real wedding?”

“I– it certainly looks that way.”

“BJ, Harry’s gay! I’m– Helen and I are… like you and Hawkeye,” she explains. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew? How could we know? When did you ever tell us?” So this is what she means when she calls him clueless. He’s so confused he hardly has time to be happy for her.

“Well, when did you ever tell me?” Margaret says, her somewhat sheepish reticence growing to righteous anger. “I thought you of all people would be able to put two and two together!”

“It’s not polite to assume!”

“When have you two ever been _polite_ to me? You’ve been a lot of things, good and horrible, but not polite, never polite.”

“I’ve been working on self-improvement.”

“You really thought after all this time I couldn’t think well enough for myself to know what would make me happy? And even if I couldn’t, you really think I would still think it was marriage? Jesus Christ, BJ, do you even know me?”

 _Sometimes I don’t know the first thing about you_. BJ is starting to think you can never really know a person, that maybe loving them is the closest thing, and even that’s not that close.

“Of course I do, Margaret, please. I was just scared for you, I was surprised. I wanted to protect you from wasting time and ruining lives like I did.”

“I don’t need your protection, BJ Hunnicutt,” she tells him. “Another thing you should know by now.”

“You’re right,” he says. He slumps down at the bar and looks up at her, testing if she’s ready to forgive him. Almost, he thinks. She rolls her eyes.

“And whose life exactly do you think you ruined, hm? Yours? Hawkeye’s? If you say Peggy or Erin I’m going to scream.” 

“I didn’t exactly make it easy for them, any of them. Or for me. Just because it worked out doesn’t mean I was nice.”

“Could you relax? You’re the nicest person any of us have ever met.”

See? She doesn’t know the first thing about him either.

“So why give in?” BJ asks, turning the conversation back to Margaret. “It’s your life, isn’t it? I thought you wanted to be independent.”

“I’m not giving in! I’m solving a problem. I mean, doesn’t it bother you? The constant invasive questions, people always trying to set you up with the only other single person they know who naturally happens to be their weird cousin with the balloon fetish?”

“Uhh–”

Margaret’s eyes go a little wide. “Anyway, you must know how it is, people getting suspicious. I don’t… my personal life isn’t anybody’s business. I don’t like to change aspects of myself to make other people happy, I don’t do that anymore. But Harry’s a good friend, and it’s something we could do to make other people stop acting like we owe them something. Maybe it’s not ideal, but we can’t all be you and Hawkeye.”

“That’s not what I meant to–”

“Oh, but it is.”

“It’s Hawkeye is what it is,” BJ says. He’s hardly had one conversation in the past twenty years that didn’t get back to him somehow.

“How’s that?”

“It’s that there was never going to be any other way for him. He doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t understand because he never… because his life was never about twisting himself up in knots trying to be something he’s not.”

Margaret laughs a little bitterly. “Yes, I’ll give him that. I’ll say this about Hawkeye, you always know what you’re getting with him.”

BJ smiles despite himself. He can’t think of Hawkeye and not. “I don’t even think it’s a choice for him. He simply doesn’t know how not to be himself.”

“Fuck if I don’t wish I could feel that way. Didn’t you ever ask him how he does it?”

BJ looks down, still smiling of course, and shakes his head. “He doesn’t know. He says just be yourself. It’s hard when… I don’t know.”

“It’s hard when you’ve been told your whole life that your self isn’t any good,” Margaret says.

BJ raises his drink in assent. “Growing up there was only ever one plan for my life, you know? You know. And everything had to go absolutely perfectly or else… and it didn’t even matter,” BJ says. “It’s not as if I’m speaking to my parents anyway.”

“I watched my parents waste nearly forty years in an unhappy marriage, and I still didn’t learn a thing until I tried it for myself.”

“But it’s not just our parents that fuck us up, I don’t think. Isn’t it the whole world?”

“So what makes Hawkeye so immune to it?”

“I don’t know,” BJ says. He wipes condensation from his beer. “Have you ever met my father-in-law? Dr. Pierce, I mean.” Margaret shakes her head. “He’s just– it’s not kindness, exactly, but it’s just obvious that he cares about Hawkeye more than anything else in the world. I don’t think he ever cared if Hawk was going to be successful, or rich, or even a doctor or anything.”

“Or married.”

“Or married or straight or anything besides happy. And so now Hawkeye’s like that, you know, all he cares about is love, fuck everything else and everybody who tells him he’s wrong. He’s kind of free in a way that I don’t know if we’ll ever be. I guess good parenting doesn’t count for nothing.”

“That’s how I know Erin will be just fine,” Margaret says.

“Oh, stop it,” BJ feigns blushing. But it is very kind. And he hopes to God she’s right.

“You know what,” she says, “I blame you but I don’t, for thinking I was making a mistake. I used to be like that, thinking if I pretended I was just… normal, and everything was hunky-dory then it would be. Shit, BJ, you know how badly I could’ve used that advice fifteen years ago?”

“Ha!” BJ says, “You know how badly _I_ could’ve used that advice fifteen years ago?”

“I suppose so,” Margaret says. “You must’ve put Hawkeye through the wringer something awful, you know that? You know that.”

“I know that,” BJ agrees. He rhythmically taps the bar. “Do you remember that day in the O-Club, the day we played Truth or Dare?”

Margaret traces a square on the table. “When you told us you didn’t know that Peg was the one? I remember.”

“That was the day that– that morning, actually, that I realized about Hawkeye. Not about him, exactly, but about me, about him.”

“I see,” Margaret says.

“I handled it very badly.”

“Relatively unsurprising. Go on.”

“I kissed him that morning. In the Swamp. Anybody could’ve come in. I kissed him, told him he was impossible, and left. I think I might be the worst thing that ever happened to him.”

“I’m actually going to kill you if that’s something you worry about, and then where will poor Hawkeye be?”

It’s so abrupt that it makes him laugh. “Good point,” he says.

Margaret probably thinks the worst thing that ever happened to him is Korea, and she might be right, but BJ thinks the real worst thing is probably going to be The Next War, and The Next. He hardly wants to be in the room when Hawkeye hears how they inevitably invade Vietnam, except he does, because he could never let Hawkeye grieve like that alone. The best things about Hawkeye are also the worst, and how desperately he aches for peace on Earth tops both lists. 

“Oh, BJ, you won’t believe what I was stewing about in the Officers’ Club that day.”

BJ wracks his brain. “A letter!” he remembers. “I saw it but I didn’t– I never asked.”

“Yes, well,” she says. “It was a letter from Helen.”

BJ snorts. “No fucking way.”

“Shut up! It was– she was ill, basically, when she went home, and she’d written me before that she was doing much better. Anyway, that day I got that stupid letter telling me she’d had a setback. God, and it was so stupid to try and drink it away!” Margaret pounds the table with her fist when she says _stupid._

“Yeah,” BJ says, “but at least it means you didn’t have to stew alone.”

“Very true,” she says. “Always more fun to stew together.”

“They should serve us over a risotto.”

“You know what,” Margaret says, giving him a comradely pat on the shoulder, “maybe I’m glad you talked to me about this. It’s ridiculous that you had to pretend I was the one who needed help, but you should know I’m here for you to talk to, especially about things you think maybe he won’t understand. He and I are pretty similar in a lot of ways–”

“No kidding.”

“But you and I aren’t strangers, either. For however glad I am that you came into his life, I’m glad you came into mine, too, Hunnicutt.”

“Well, shit, Margaret. You’re gonna make me cry.”

“Shut up, BJ,” she says, but she’s grinning.

“Okay, just one more question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why all the pomp and circumstance? I can’t imagine wanting all this just for a charade wedding, not to mention the gasket I think Hawkeye would blow.”

“Why? I thought you of all people would understand!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a party, BJ! Who doesn’t want to have a party?”

“You make a good point,” BJ concedes as Hawkeye approaches the two of them, holding the hand of a tall brunette who’s trailing behind him slightly.

“Beej!” he announces cheerfully, “We’ve made a terrible mistake!”

“I know, Hawk–”

“She’s not really marrying Harry; they’re _lesbians_ ,” he comically exaggerates mouthing the last word.

“Yes, dear,” BJ says, patting him encouragingly on the shoulder.

“Margaret, I’m so sorry we doubted you, what can we ever do to make it up to you,” Hawkeye rattles off, dropping to his knees and gripping Margaret’s trouser hem by way of pleading. She kicks him away lightly with one high heel.

“Helen,” the object of Margaret’s affection holds a thin arm out and offers BJ a handshake over Hawkeye on the floor.

“BJ,” he says. “Hey, listen,” he goes on as Hawkeye rises and dusts himself off. “If you do anything to hurt Margaret we’re gonna come after you.”

“I’d say the same to you. Besides, I could take both of you with my hands tied behind my back,” Helen answers evenly.

“Promise?” Hawkeye says, leaning one elbow against the bar and kissing Margaret on the cheek by way of greeting.

“Disgusting,” Margaret says. “I will not have you propositioning my w–” she stumbles over the word and can’t quite get it out. 

“Please!” Hawkeye says, “I wouldn’t dream of laying a finger on your wife!”

BJ and Margaret gape at him like he comes from another planet, even though no one else in the bar bats an eye, let alone hears. Helen bursts out laughing.

“I knew I always liked this one best,” she says. “He’s fun.”

“I certainly think so,” BJ says.

“Flatterer,” Hawkeye says, blowing him a kiss behind Margaret’s head.

Margaret looks between them. “You two better make sure you get your act together for the reception tomorrow. I want you on your best behavior, no funny business, understand?”

Helen points an accusatory finger at them as well, following Margaret’s example. Hawkeye and BJ share a cheeky glance even though they aren’t even planning anything. They try not to dwell on the past, so no full body cast for the expectant husband this time.

Besides, Hawkeye and BJ are the definition of cleaning up nice. Hawkeye in a tuxedo is a sight BJ will never get used to. And it’s not that ill-fitting hand-me-down he had in Korea; it’s a real suit, tailored and everything, with a thin black tie that makes him look like James Bond. And, you know. It’s an extra little something special now that he actually allows himself to find other men in general and Hawkeye in particular attractive.

“What’s up, my tie crooked?” Hawkeye says, looking down to examine it when he catches BJ staring.

“Nope,” BJ says, wearing the pleasant smile that has started to feel like home again. “I was just noticing that you’re extremely handsome. And that I’m in love with you.”

Sometimes BJ still worries that Hawkeye worries. He thinks maybe Hawkeye will never completely believe that he’s not going to leave one day, and he almost doesn’t blame him. Hawkeye’s had a checkered history with goodbyes, or lacks thereof, and BJ knows just as well that he’s added his fair share to it. He’s tried to make up for it (he’s spent decades making up for it), but the part of Hawkeye that’s still seven years old being pushed into the lake by the boy he likes and the part of him that’s still ten learning that his mother died before he even really knew she was sick not to mention the part of him that’s thirty years old missing Trapper’s plane by ten lousy minutes will always be preparing for the day BJ tells him he’s not worth it anymore. It doesn’t matter that BJ knows for certain that day will never come. It’s just one of those things he’s getting okay with.

“Ah,” Hawkeye says. He laughs quietly. He still doesn’t really know how to take a genuine compliment. “Well, who could blame you?”

BJ goes over and stands behind Hawkeye at the mirror, adjusting his collar even though it was already lying flat. 

“I guess you were right,” BJ says, “about us not having to worry. About us butting out.”

“I learned from the best,” Hawkeye says, turning around and pulling BJ toward him by his tie. “Kiss me, please?”

BJ obliges. Hawkeye still kisses like he thinks every time will be the last. On the one hand it’s fantastic in that it still manages to thrill him after a lifetime and on the other hand it’s more cause for worry.

They pull apart.

“You, um,” Hawkeye starts, looking down. Then he meets BJ’s gaze. “You make me happier than I ever thought I’d be. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you but–”

“Everything, Hawk. And that’s what you deserve. Everything.”

“Hey.” Hawkeye bites his lip. “Wanna imagine it’s us up there?”

BJ nods. “I do.”

The ceremony is surprisingly beautiful. BJ starts to get the sense the officiant is in on it, too, when as many vows as possible are made without reference to gender and when Margaret and Helen are basically making goo-goo eyes at each other throughout. BJ supposes he’s not really one to talk, considering his fingers are currently interlocked with Hawkeye’s hidden on the bench in the slight space between their thighs. Later he finds out it’s not even a real church anymore, that it’s been deconsecrated for years, and he starts to get the sense that he may just be a very clueless person.

At the reception following, they watch Margaret and Harry share their first dance while both making eye contact with different people over their shoulders. BJ experiences two stabbing pains, the first the memory of Hawkeye’s eye on him as he danced with Margaret on his wedding anniversary, the other of Hawkeye blowing kisses at him over Margaret’s shoulder in Sacramento. BJ feels his stomach drop and he’s talking before he quite knows what he’s going to say.

“Let’s dance,” he says.

“What, here? Really?” Hawkeye says as the first song ends and people start to join the happy couple on the floor.

“Yes. Please?”

“Of course,” Hawkeye breathes. He looks like he’s just seen BJ walk on water. A miracle, that is. “God, of course. You want to lead?”

“Sure,” BJ says, and he holds out his hand. Hawkeye takes it, and places his other on his shoulder. BJ pulls him close, not too close, but close enough that even though Hawkeye will know BJ is thinking about leaving room for plausible deniability, he’ll also know it’s not all he’s thinking about. They’re just two people, dancing at a wedding.

“God, I am kissing you so hard right now,” BJ says as he leads Hawkeye in a waltz.

“Beej!” Hawkeye says, low and sort of animalistic. “I’m undoing your tie with my teeth.” 

BJ badly stifles a laugh. “Be careful with that, this suit’s a rental.”

“It is not.”

BJ dips him. It’s subtle, but it’s there. He spins him a little wildly and catches him in his arms. Hawkeye lingers there for a moment longer than maybe he should, but broadly speaking people are either ignoring them or deliberately looking away. After a little while they’ve set a precedent of sorts and soon Margaret and Helen are dancing with each other as well and people either think it’s a joke or they don’t, and either way it’s happening and Hawkeye and BJ are living in it. BJ feels warm from knowing he’s helping Hawkeye live out a fantasy he’s probably had since he was a kid.

After a couple more energetic numbers they go sit at the erstwhile pew where Helen’s massaging Margaret’s feet, her high heels discarded on the seat next to her.

“Hey,” Margaret says, making meaningful eye contact with Hawkeye. “Thank you for doing that.”

“Don’t thank me,” Hawkeye says, “it was BJ’s idea. I was just following his lead.”

Margaret smiles very warmly at BJ. “Well, well, well. I didn’t know you had it in you. Thank you, BJ, that was a very nice thing you did.”

BJ decides not to tell her that he didn’t even realize what he was doing. He was so overcome by the feeling of needing to be dancing with Hawkeye _yesterday_ that he hadn’t thought about how it would make the space for the brides (essentially) to dance. Still.

“Anytime,” BJ says. Hawkeye leans back and rests his elbow on BJ’s shoulder.

“Babe,” Helen says, looking up at Margaret. “You look beat.”

“Thank you.”

Helen smiles and rolls her eyes. “You can take a break if you want.”

“What, and leave you here?”

“All my friends are here, I see them all the time. Yours came all the way from California and you can’t even hear them over the noise. You two drive here?” Helen says to BJ like she can tell he’s the one who drives.

“Yeah,” BJ says, “we’re parked outside the hotel.”

“Ooh, Margaret, can we?” Hawkeye asks excitably. “I know the perfect spot, it’s just fifteen minutes away in Great Barrington, behind the Bandstand across from the Mahaiwe there’s a gazebo in the grass where you can just–”

“All right, Hawkeye, you’ve convinced me!” Margaret says, laughing. “Let’s move, Cato,” she tells BJ.

“Helen? You’re a darling, a gem, a superstar,” Hawkeye says. “Here. This is from me,” he kisses her right cheek, “from BJ,” her left, “and from Margaret.” He places a chaste peck on her lips but the message gets across. Then he takes Margaret by the hand and leads her barefoot out of the church hall, BJ trailing behind by a few paces.

It’s a short drive, and Hawkeye directs him where to park behind the Triplex, then lends Margaret his shoes so she doesn’t have to walk across the damp grass in her bare feet. Once they arrive it’s obvious what to do, and they lie with their heads in the middle of the wooden floor, their bodies forming a three-pointed star under the rickety white canopy of the gazebo.

“So, tell us about the lucky lady, Margaret,” Hawkeye says. “Does she make your temperature rise, your heart go boom boom boom?”

“Shut up, Hawkeye,” she says. “But if you must know, yes.”

“Ha!”

BJ grins silently and takes one of each of their hands in his.

“It makes a difference,” Margaret says, “that she knew me when I was younger. She makes me feel… I don’t know. I hardened so much as I grew up, because I had to if I wanted to make anything of myself. But being with her? It’s like, what kind of life was I even trying to make for myself in the first place if I had to be such a jagged person?”

It’s why Margaret is someplace in between Hawkeye and BJ, and something besides them. She had herself and lost herself, then found herself again. Hawkeye was always just Hawkeye, no pretense and no soul-searching required. He couldn’t be phony if he tried, not really. Meanwhile BJ was lost, and the best things that ever happened to him are always going to be all tangled up with the worst, but he’s okay with it, because the best is pretty fucking good. And Hawkeye’s right, however ironically; you don’t remember the bad stuff as much as you think you will.

“You look beautiful, too,” BJ says. “Did you have fun dressing up?” He and Hawkeye rarely get this dolled up, but when they do it’s good fun. He wonders if it’s different for Margaret, if all the trappings of femininity don’t weigh on her differently than on him and Hawk throwing on a suit every once in a while.

She seems to be mulling over the question. “Yes, actually,” she says. “I suppose… I wanted to wear a beautiful dress just once in my life, and high heels without feeling guilty that I was shirking some responsibility, or paranoid that I’m going to get called away to deal with some, some immeasurable tragedy.”

Hawkeye squeezes BJ’s hand.

“It’s not like I don’t like to be girly sometimes, you know,” she says. “It can be fun to look nice. I just like to do it on my own terms. Tomorrow I’ll be back to slacks and sensible shoes in all likelihood, but it’s not like this isn’t nice. Besides, Helen was wearing white, too, in case you didn’t notice.”

BJ can feel Hawkeye preparing to make a wisecrack and squeezes his hand back to stop him.

“It’s symbolic, but it makes me feel something real,” Margaret says dreamily.

“I think that’s all that matters,” BJ says.

Hawkeye’s hand hasn’t relaxed so BJ knows he’s still remembering Margaret’s first wedding. 

“Did you ever think of inviting Charles? He must be what, barely two hours away,” Hawkeye observes. BJ thanks God that’s all Hawkeye was dwelling on.

“I thought about it, yes,” Margaret says. “I stared at his number inside my book of sonnets for hours, actually. I don’t know.”

BJ feels her shift, and knows she’s leaning closer into Hawkeye’s side.

She goes on, “You know, you two are the only people to be at both my weddings? And Charles being here wouldn’t have changed that. I don’t know what it means.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Hawkeye says. “It means you wanted us to be here, and I think that’s nice.”

Suddenly there’s a thunderclap as if in response to what Hawkeye said.

“It wasn’t supposed to rain today,” BJ says.

“Well, you know what they say,” Hawkeye says. “If you don’t like the weather in the Berkshires, wait five minutes.”

“Right.”

When Hawkeye and Margaret are both giving him the same advice, that’s when it really makes him think. The downpour punctuates his next thought.

“I used to think I was the most observant person on the planet,” BJ tells them. “Staying on the sidelines, taking note of everything important. Then acting. Looking, then leaping. Rational, you know?”

Hawkeye rubs BJ’s knuckles with his thumb. “Uh-huh.”

“I just wonder what else I missed. After a month I thought I had Hawkeye all figured out.”

“Little old me?”

BJ shrugs. His right shoulder bumps Hawkeye’s left.

“What about you, Margaret?” Hawkeye goes on. “What did you think of me at first?”

BJ can practically hear his eyelashes batting.

“Insufferable!” she says what would be too quickly if Hawkeye didn’t definitely already know that’s what she was going to say. “But annoyingly good at your job. I would’ve changed everything about you except your medical proficiency.”

“Ah,” Hawkeye says. “Likewise.”

“Hawkeye,” Margaret says tentatively, “when did you know you were… different?”

Hawkeye clicks his tongue. “Margaret, you can say ‘gay,’ you know. It’s not a dirty word.”

“I know,” she says, not sounding fully convinced.

“Ah, it’s okay.” He taps his foot, thinking. He has his knees up, naturally, since he’s incapable just standing up straight or lying flat on his back. “The whole time I guess. You know me, Margaret, I’m irrepressible.”

“Ooh, that smarts,” BJ says.

“I think my dad knew before me, actually, when I made him take me to every Cary Grant movie that came out during my formative years about six times and even I didn’t know why.”

“Even when you were… with me?” Margaret says, at which point BJ realizes that he never actually knew for sure about the two of them until just then.

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye says. “You could give Cary a run for his money. I try not to worry about things like that. I’ve got enough on my mind as is.”

That’s what really makes Hawkeye different. He worries constantly about seemingly everything and yet doesn’t give a shit about what everybody else worries about. BJ wonders how old he was when he realized _that_ about himself.

“Why?” Hawkeye says. “What about you?” He’s asking Margaret since they both know about BJ already. He worked so hard at not being an open book and just look at him now.

“Part of me always knew, too, I suppose. And it’s funny you should say that about your father, I mean, I think the same might be true of mine. Except he took those parts of me and, I don’t know, twisted them somehow. It’s taken me a long time to get untangled but boy, was it worth it.”

Hawkeye sighs contentedly.

“It’s just” Margaret goes on, “some days I want to wear a pretty dress and some days I want to wear a suit. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it still confuses me sometimes. I’m more complicated than people give me credit for.”

“Don’t worry, Margaret,” Hawkeye says. “I think you’re plenty complicated. The both of you, actually. Me, I’m easy.”

“You’re not easy, Hawkeye,” BJ says. “You’re complicated, too. But you’re so fucking worth it. Both of you.”

When they get back to the hotel, BJ decides to keep the game going.

“My dear,” he says, “welcome to the bridal suite.”

Hawkeye grins. “I never had a honeymoon before, you’ll have to show me how.”

“No sweat. Close your eyes.” Hawkeye does while BJ unlocks the door, then he places his hands over Hawkeye’s eyes and kisses the back of his neck.

“Mm,” Hawkeye says. “Strong start.”

“Okay,” BJ says. “The room is lit only by candlelight. They’re all over, but not near enough to the bed to set any blankets on fire or anything.”

“Very sensible.” Hawkeye starts loosening his tie.

“There’s rose petals scattered all over, and “I’m in the Mood for Love” is playing on the phonograph.”

“You brought a phonograph?”

“I don’t– I don’t know. It’s playing on the radio, then.”

“Ah, okay.”

BJ rolls his eyes, then kisses behind Hawkeye’s ear. “Then, you turn around, and we look at each other with total stars in our eyes like we’ve never been more in love and then, uh, you probably know how the rest goes.”

“Sure you don’t want to spell it out for me?”

“Ha ha. Okay, open.”

BJ takes his hands back and Hawkeye slowly spins to face him. He’s got stars in his eyes, all right, although BJ can’t recall the last time Hawkeye looked at him without looking like that. Even before he knew what it was Hawkeye was looking at him like that.

“Funny,” Hawkeye says. “It looks just like the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.”

“I never said that’s not where we were. It’s all I could get on such short notice.”

“Shotgun wedding?” Hawkeye undoes BJ’s tie as well, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“Oh, don’t say that word.”

“What, wedding?”

BJ kisses him instead of telling him to shut up. Hawkeye gets the message, smiling into his mouth.

BJ is smitten with the Berkshires. It feels the same as being smitten with Hawkeye, which is why they eventually make it back east like Hawk always wanted. BJ loves California and he used to think he’d never leave, but he already left Mill Valley, and once Erin is away at school there’s nothing keeping him tethered there. The only tether is the one Hawkeye has to New England, to lobster bisque and frigid snowy winters and the two story house with an amber mezuzah on the door that his dad inevitably leaves him when he passes away.

BJ was wrong about a lot of things. He used to think he knew exactly what he wanted out of life. He used to think he had it, and the only thing that ever stopped him from having it was the war (the stupid war, the fucking war, the inherent craziness of war and the craziness of all those who submit to it). He wasn’t wrong about everything, though. He did want to settle down with one person, and be a doctor, and raise a family. It just didn’t turn out exactly as he planned. Some things are better, and some things are worse. He still hates that he ever set foot in Korea, and he and Hawkeye both know that if given the option, they would press the button that erases the war from human history and live with the fact that they would never meet. It doesn’t mean they love each other any less. And sometimes BJ catches a glimpse of Erin in the morning brushing her teeth the same way every day, every tooth up and down ten times and thinks _yeah, we did okay._

And so years down the line when they’re happy and they’re settled all those years they spent not knowing or pretending not to know just feel like a dream. Now when BJ dreams of Hawkeye he wakes up next to him, too. One morning they’re lounging in bed under a blue and gray blanket Hawkeye knitted himself, Hawkeye reading his latest favorite book with his head in BJ’s lap as they never quite outgrew the need to constantly be touching each other, the habit of casual intimacy that didn’t go away even once they were allowed to be formal about it.

“Hey, listen to this,” Hawkeye says, then reads from his book. “‘I now give you my word of honor that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of ever animal– the ‘I am’ to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us– in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else is dead machinery.

“‘I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Shepherdstown. Very well– let a five-year-old paint a secret interpretation of that encounter. Let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light.’”

“You think that’s what we are, Hawk? Two unwavering bands of light?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

BJ strokes the graying strands of Hawkeye’s hair, some of them finally turning to white. He remembers an old game they used to play, and old thing they used to say before they allowed themselves to just talk. Sometimes Hawkeye still takes a little coaxing. Sometimes BJ does, too.

“Hey, Hawk. Tell me something about you I don’t already know.”

“Mm,” Hawkeye says, dog-earing his page and shutting his book. “Why this, why now?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you.”

“You know me, you know me.”

“Come on, anything.”

“Fine, okay.” Hawkeye adjusts his posture so he’s lying flatter on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “My first crush was Cary Grant.”

“Doesn’t count. I already knew that.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor.”

“Nope.”

“I’ve been in love with you since ‘Rudyard Kipling.’”

“Nope!”

“One time I hooked up with Margaret–”

“Hawkeye! Come on, just tell me one new thing about you. I know there’s more because there’s always more. I promise I don’t bite.”

“I wish you would.”

“Hawk.”

“Me? What about you? You’re the international man of mystery here, Beej.”

“Yeah, but my past doesn’t matter to me like yours does.” BJ can finally admit this, that he was born once when Erin was born and a second time when he met Hawkeye and that’s pretty much it. “You’re made of your past and your stories and you’re so unique and amazing that I wanna know every single reason you got this way so come on and humor me because I love–”

“So you’re complicated, Beej. You hide things, even from yourself. Not everyone is like that.”

“Hawkeye–”

“I know, I know, but you know what I mean.” BJ fixes him with a stare and doesn’t let up. “Okay, okay, maybe everyone is like that. But not everyone is like that the way you’re like that. Not everybody is unknowable, baby. Some people just answer questions when you ask.”

“You really think you’re one of those people? You’re evading my question right now!”

“Relax, Beej! I’m just playing. You want a story, you got one. Let me think.” Hawkeye taps an idle rhythm on his chest while BJ runs his fingers through his hair.

“You wanna know how I’m like this? I’ll tell you a story about why I’m like this.”

Hawkeye tells him about the first time he went to a bar in New York, and he’d never been out drinking before, so the girl he took just told him to order something he knew the name of.

“You’re joking,” BJ says. “That’s why you drank martinis?”

“It was practically the only drink I’d ever heard of! I even ordered it dry just because I thought it sounded sophisticated.”

“It’s the little moments, huh?”

“What?”

“That end up determining everything.”

Hawkeye tells him about the guy who tried to cheat off him on an organic chemistry exam who didn’t heed his warning when he told him he hadn’t studied since he thought he was just trying not to get in trouble and then got pissed off and threw a root beer float in his face at the next medical frat party when he found out they both scored about 60%. Hawkeye props himself up so he’s lying across BJ’s chest, and BJ scoots down to accommodate him.

“One time,” Hawkeye says. “There was this guy I was crazy about.”

“Oh, come on, Hawk.”

“No, no, just listen, just listen. There was this guy I was crazy about, and we were working at the same hospital. It should have been torture, having to see him every day and knowing I could never, ever have him. He was married, you see.”

“Uh-huh,” BJ says, and gently clutches Hawkeye’s tricep.

“It should have been torture for a lot of reasons, actually, since the place we were working was an absolute disaster. Horrible hours, deplorable conditions, no hazard pay despite what I would call near constant hazards. The head nurse was all right, though, and the hospital chaplain was really one of a kind.”

“You don’t say.” 

“And some of it was pretty torturous. Wondering if we were even gonna make it to the next day, and the next. Wondering if I was ever going to feel like a person again, barely even being able to imagine a life after that place, since it was like having to die and be reborn every day into new and more creative hellscapes.”

“So what happened, Prometheus?”

Hawkeye looks up at him. “Prometheus didn’t die every day. The whole point of the torture was that he was awake to feel the eagle peck out his liver.”

“Hawk.”

“No, definitely an eagle.” 

“Hawkeye!”

Hawkeye smiles and settles back down.

“But what should have made me miserable about him made me happy. I don’t think he knows this, but just being near him was enough, would always have been enough. I think he feels guilty for not telling me when he figured it out, and especially for not telling me when he figured out he liked me back.”

“Yeah?”

“But he shouldn’t feel guilty. It was inevitable, what I felt. And anything he did would have been enough. The fact that I get to be with him every day is just gravy.”

“I’m gravy, Hawk?”

“Mm-hm,” Hawkeye says, rubbing peaceful little circles on BJ’s chest. “Finest kind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so: Margaret and Helen live in Northampton because it’s been affectionately dubbed “city of lesbians” by my parents who apparently used to know a ton of lesbian couples living there in the 80s and 90s when my dad worked in the berkshires. “It’s important to me what happens to you” is naturally from edge of the city. Rent free I tell you. “The Next War and the next” and “the craziness of war and the craziness of all those who submit to it” are from an excerpt from some writing by Alfred Kazin that I found in the back of my copy of catch-22 which I am once again emphasizing you all simply Must read. The long excerpt hawkeye reads at the end is from breakfast of champions, my first or second favorite Kurt Vonnegut book 
> 
> Also: location location location!  
> i. love. Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It’s my favorite Berkshire town which is why I made it hawkeye’s favorite Berkshire town, it does have the best tchotchke store (7arts, which I’m literally praying will still be in business in the future), and is the site of the erstwhile Alice’s restaurant (a song about dodging the draft!! Must listen!!), and the church there also features heavily in the song. Also I know the restaurant from Alice’s restaurant wouldn’t have been open when hawkeye was living in new england but we’ll just say he has his sources. Also Maine is like, far away from there but if I used to work summers in the berkshires then so could he. The Red Lion is a charming inn on main st. in Stockbridge that miraculously opened in 1937. Great Barrington is nearby and the gazebo behind the Bandstand is the best place to spend a rainstorm. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with this one! Your comments along the way have meant so much to me and really encouraged me to keep going so I basically just want to say thanks again!!  
> Come say hi @crickelwood on Tumblr if you’d like :)


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